The Price to Be Paid
by Lesera128
Summary: Angel fulfills the Shanshu Prophecy & gets his human life back, but Brennan makes a decision & intervenes, changing everything, when he suffers an accident that makes it clear the Senior Partners at W&H are trying to take it away from him. Bones/Angel crossover. AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe"-"Barging In"-"Making Him Beg"-"Comfort on the Edge of Reason"-"The After Party." Complete.
1. Part I: The Need for the Bargain

**The Price to Be Paid**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: , then—moving on...

**Summary: **Angel fulfills the Shanshu Prophecy and gets his human life back, but Brennan makes a decision and intervenes, changing everything, when he suffers an accident that makes it clear the Senior Partners at Wolfram & Hart are trying to take it away from him. Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg," "Comfort on the Edge of Reason," and "The After Party."

**Logistical Notes: **For those who are familiar with Whedon-verse, this story assumes the events through the end of Angel's series finale ("Not Fade Away") and the comic-book "Angel: After the Fall" are canon. It ignores all other stories in the Angel chronology, including the BTVS Season 8 in comics. For those who are wondering, in _Bones _chronology, this story would take place shortly before the Gemma Arrington case as depicted in 5x16 - "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole" flashback or approximately one year before the events in 1x01 - "Pilot."

**A/N: **Dharmasera, Inc. believes they've set a record with this former one-shot. It's now a whopping 70k words long (approximately) which means it won't be posting in a single day like the previous pieces—that's the bad news. The good news is that we hope to post a part per day over the next week (or so) until it's complete. Now the might-be good news or bad news depending on your point of view: this story arc will now draw on a grand tradition established by Joss Whedon in BtVS and AtS, i.e., use of the flashback. For those who are unfamiliar, the rule with Whedon-verse flashbacks are that there are no rules except they are a-linear as hell. We know this will be frustrating to some, but if you can't take it in this piece, we can guaran-damn-tee you that you won't like it in the other three in this series. All we can say is...well, sorry. We're not changing. For those who dig it, read on...

**UNF Alert:** Seriously...since when has a Dharmasera piece ever not needed one of these? ::blinks:: Well, even if it doesn't apply to the first part (alas, sadly, it does _not_), we don't want to confuse ourselves, so we're leaving it here as a placeholder. Consider it an IOU for unf-age to come. It's not like you don't know that we're good for it anyway. So, now, moving on...

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**Part I: The Need for the Bargain**

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Once she'd landed at LAX, Brennan found herself in what she'd always imagined purgatory must be like—if she believed in the notion that such a place existed—for almost twelve hours. It had been only twelve hours earlier that her entire world had been turned upside down by a single telephone call. Her stint in her self-labeled purgatory continued for another seventy-five minutes between when she landed and when she finally arrived at her final destination. During those seventy-five minutes, she began to wonder how non-evil souls could leave such a place without becoming clinically insane from the overwhelming uncertainty and building anxiety that they faced as they waited for something, _anything _to break the stalemate that they were in—the same stalemate that had rendered them into such a state of unknowing and seemingly unending listlessness with which they began. After a time, she felt her respiration grow shallow once again as she teetered on the edge of another panic attack. Knowing that she could ill afford such an occurrence when she was as close as she was to her final destination—and whatever news awaited her there, for better or worse—Brennan attempted to use logic and reason to calm herself. Focusing on the tasks of disembarking from the plane, carrying her small overnight bag through the airport, and going out into the balmy summer air of a Los Angeles night in mid-July, she managed to hold off on the panic attack. Once she was settled into the cab, however, the battle she was losing with her growing anxiety continued to get worse. All in all, she was rather proud of herself that she had lasted as long as she had with only one panic attack to her credit. After all, it wasn't like most people could handle things any better than she had given the fact that for almost twelve hours, she hadn't known what was going to happen to her, when, where, or how.

After the cab she'd hailed at the airport began its slow crawl down Sepulveda Boulevard, traffic even at the late hour had continued to draw out the painful waiting game as if to torture her. She persisted in attaining her goal as the cab she rode in inched its way towards the intersections of Sepulveda and Wilshire Boulevards that would herald her entry into the heart of downtown L.A. By the time the cab deposited her in front of Good Samaritan Hospital, the Brennan had found that the only way she could keep from going crazy and not having a relapse on her earlier panic attack was to repeat the factual information she knew and keep repeating it in her head.

Good Samaritan Hospital had been founded in 1885, although the current hospital building which the taxicab was taking her to had actually opened in 1976. It was a teaching hospital with 408 beds. It was open twenty-four hours and was a Level 2 Trauma Center. That designation meant that it could provide comprehensive trauma care, although it would send its worst cases to the nearby Level 1 Trauma Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center or Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

_So, he hasn't been transferred yet_, a voice in her head reminded her. _If he'd been that far gone, they would've transferred him to another hospital. But, they didn't. So, be logical about this, Brennan. It can't be good, but whatever it is, it can't be __that__ bad either since they haven't transferred him to Cedars-Sinai or UCLA Medical Center. He's still at Good Samaritan, so that means something that isn't completely negative in its connotations._

Even still, logic aside, Brennan was too afraid to hope for the best, and so had continued preparing herself for the worst. After all, they'd waited three days to call her. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. In a way, that proved that things were just as they'd wanted them to be—private and between them and no one else. Then again, it's not like she could assign blame to any of the team members of Angel Investigations for not calling her. For the most part, no one even knew that he'd want her to be called if things had gotten _that _bad, and she kept telling herself, that was _exactly _as it should be.

But, as time had progressed, eventually one person had remembered her and had made the call. One person who knew something of her, something of them, had made the effort to find her number and call her. And, she knew, he must've done it for a single reason. The person who made the call had thought that Angel was running out of time and that she needed to come to say goodbye. He'd been out of it for three days. But, finally, the call had come...and that's how she knew it had to be bad if the person who dialed her number and gave her the news had made the effort to find and dial her number to give her the news. Yes, it had to be bad..

_Very bad._

_But, he's not dead_, that same calm and even voice of rationality kept echoing in her head. It was, a small part of her noted with irony, the same voice that she often used when teaching her students. It was a voice of logic, rationality, reason, and authority. _If he was dead, you would know it_, it reminded her. _You would feel it. But, since you don't, he's not. He's not dead._

_He's not dead._

She clung to that fact like a life preserver as she pulled the strap of her dark brown leather messenger bag more tightly against her shoulder as she went down the long hallway that the reception nurse had indicated she needed to walk down in order to find one Bobby Kent's ICU room when she claimed to be his wife recently returned to L.A. from an out of town business trip she'd been away on when her husband had had his unfortunate accident. The antiseptic smell that assaulted her nostrils made her face twitch.

She hated hospitals. She hated them. They only meant death and loss to her. In her entire life, one that spanned more than five centuries, she'd never entered a hospital building for any positive reason or ever left with good news. For her, there were no happy reasons to visit such a place. She'd never had many friends, let alone any that had ever had babies. She herself had never been pregnant, and so couldn't think of a single reason why hospitals shouldn't be associated with anything but illness and pain and suffering and grief and death...and loss.

_But, you haven't lost him yet. He's not dead_, the voice sharply reminded her again. _Trust yourself. You haven't lost him yet. No matter how bad it is, he still has to be alive because you'd know...you'd know if he was dead._

She walked in silence for a for more moments. Then, as she turned a corner, she could sense she was getting close. She could feel the familiar pull of Angel's energy, drawing her towards him as he always had. It was weak, but it was still there.

_He's still alive_, that annoying voice chimed in her head again as it simultaneously gave her permission to breath a small, albeit reluctant, sigh of relief.. _See? I told you. I was right. He isn't gone. He's still alive._

As her thoughts rattled around her head, the feeling that she was getting closer to Angel grew stronger. And, if her instincts hadn't been enough to confirm to her that she finally reached the correct place, as she turned one final corner, a small sitting area that was located a few feet away from a nearby circle of ICU rooms did so when she saw a solitary figure haphazardly lounging on a chair, flipping through what looked to be an old issue of _Rolling Stone_. The lone figure, clad in a dark black leather duster, looked up from his magazine when he heard the sharp echo of Brennan's boots reverberating in the hallway, clearly unimpressed with what he was reading or, for that matter, what had previously interrupted him. However, upon seeing Brennan, his blue eyes widened slightly with curiosity as he watched her approach. Brennan had apparently piqued his curiosity to the point that he was willing to abandon the current focus of his attention when he haphazardly he tossed the magazine onto the side table next to him with a disgusted grunt as she came to stand in front of him.

Nodding at the magazine, he grumbled, "This magazine isn't what it used to be, you know." He rolled his eyes. "They've finally gotten around to doing a piece of a blog that Billy Corgan posted on the net about why the Smashing Pumpkins really broke up in 2000. That is, I think, a perfect example of why printed rags like this are gonna go the way of the dodo before the net is said and done with things."

He stopped, his blue eyes glancing at the cover of the magazine, and then scowled lightly as he bemoaned, "I mean, the cheap bastards didn't even spring for a new photo shoot. They're just recycling pics they used from the Pumpkins' last tour for _Adore_ in 1999." He shook his head and sighed. "I guess I should've known the whole rag was going to seed when they shitcanned the large ten by twelve format in favor of the standard magazine not too far back. I mean, for fuck's sake, you'd think a magazine with such a backwards-looking bias towards rock 'n' roll nostalgia would at least have the decency to stick with the old format for old time's sake. But, suppose not since they're just a bunch of unrepentant Baby Boomer tossers selling out to mass media marketing." He paused, glanced at the magazine again, shook his head, and then muttered, "I mean, what the fuck?"

For her part, Brennan stood quietly in front of him patiently waiting until he'd finished ranting for three reasons. First, she was still somewhat surprised and relieved that he was the only one that she was going to have to face and needed some time to let herself feel something positive after processing so many negative emotions during the course of her day. In truth, she'd expected—well, she wasn't certain whom she'd expected to see waiting there for her, but she hadn't expected it to be anyone that wouldn't ask questions or make things more difficult for her than they already were. It could've be any of them, she knew, and there was a small part of her that had dreaded who might've been at the ready to interrogate her as to her identity, her interest in Angel, and why they'd never really met her beyond one or two brief meetings several years earlier, if at all.

She'd expected to see the usual members of Angel's team—at least any of them who'd survived the final battle that had seen L.A. cast into hell for a year before it was returned to earth through no small effort of Angel's own doings. There had been casualties in that war—Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, most notably. The single person that Brennan might have been able to call a friend of her own—Winifred Burkle—was also no more. Now, an ancient goddess named Ilyria stood in Fred's place. Of course, that left Charles Gunn...and, Brennan suspected, Angel's son, Connor. She'd still yet to meet him, and for some reason she felt uneasy about potentially confronting the offspring of Angel and Darla.

Then, of course, there had also been the potential that, in addition to calling her, Spike might have reached out to the Slayer. That, perhaps, more than anything—besides the thought of losing Angel to death before she got there—was something that made Brennan the most apprehensive about coming to L.A. and going straight to the hospital with no foreknowledge of what to expect. Truthfully, Brennan didn't know how she'd react if and when she came face to face with Buffy Summers after all that time. There was still something to be said for having three thousand miles of a continental divide separating them. But, still, once Brennan got the call, she immediately decided she'd had no choice but to go since it was Angel about whom she was talking.

For him, she'd do anything...no matter how painful, no matter what the cost was to herself. For him, there was no sacrifice too small or too great she could make on his behalf. For him, she'd do what she had to do. She'd find somewhat to do what needed to be done. She'd find a way. For him, she'd do it...no questions asked.

Yes, for him—for _him_, she'd do anything.

It just happened to be the reality of fulfilling such aspirations that had jarred her a bit as she'd prepared potentially to confront his loss, and also doing so in front of an audience that might've contained such members as Connor and Buffy. However, when she saw Spike as the only one who would witness her arrival, she couldn't help but feel the overwhelming sense of relief and immense gratitude continue to grow with each minute she stood in front of him listening to his nostalgic rants about _Rolling Stone _magazine which suggested that perhaps, whether by luck or the force of some greater providence, Angel's condition was not as grave as she'd fearedse.

Still, as Brennan stood in front of Spike, she knew she still needed the verbal reassurance. Quite understandably, she was too afraid to trust what her instinct was already telling her before she heard it from him. Her piercing pale blue eyes stared at his for a long minute. She didn't say a word, but remained quiet as Spike looked at her, studying her. The vampire took in the sight of her tense body language and her silence and then nodded at her with a sigh, somehow knowing that which she needed to hear.

"He's okay," Spike said simply. "In fact, better than okay. He's awake now."

As soon as he'd spoken, the words he'd said seemed almost as if they had a magic of their own. It was almost as if he'd just lifted the weight of the world from Brennan's shoulders as she exhaled a long breath of relief that it felt like she'd been holding for half a day across a 3,000 mile transcontinental journey.

_Thank you_, a weaker and softer voice in her mind chimed. _Oh, God...thank you._

She inhaled through her nostrils, and exhaled slowly through her mouth, repeating the process several times. After a couple of moments, finally able to move, she took a step towards the ensouled vampire that had been sired by Drusilla only a couple of decades after Brennan had taken up with Angelus, tilting her head as she asked, "Where is he?"

Spike nodded his blonde head in the direction of the nearby hall. "In with the Junior Bint," he replied. "Since he isn't much for talking yet, I think JB wants to take advantage of the silence." He stopped, cocking an eyebrow at Brennan as he added, "Then again, well, hell. I can't argue with the mini ponce there. He's got the right idea for once because I know I like the idea of taking advantage of the fact that McBroody can't aimlessly rant and ramble. I might just give the git a piece of my mind. Been wanting to share a few choice opinions with him actually, now that I think about it."

Spike crossed his arms across his chest as his lips curled into a smile, not paying attention to the look of amusement that crossed Brennan's face at Spike's comments about Angel's tendency to 'aimlessly rant and ramble' after the tirade he'd just gone off on about the mere annoyance he felt at a pop culture magazine.

"It's rather a nice change of pace knowing that I can give him the what for and don't have to listen to his endless prattle," the vampire continued.

After another minute, as he took in the sight of Brennan's still apprehensive body language despite the small smile that tugged at the corners of her tired lips, his voice softened just a touch as he tilting his head and continued, "You can go in and see him if you want. Gunn took the Blue Meanie back to the Hyperion so that they could get some sleep. That's why it's just me and the runtling on shift right now."

Brennan's eyes darted towards the hallway. There was a certain longing that flashed in them as she briefly considered his offer before it quickly disappeared. Shaking her head, Brennan refocused her eyes on Spike and then said slowly, "No, I-I...that is, I need to know first. Before anything else...can you tell me? What happened?"

The horrors that had played and replayed on an endless loop in her mind as to how and why Angel had ended up in the hospital briefly resumed in her mind. Pictures of random demons trying to tear him apart, minions of the Senior Partners crashing into his room at the Hyperion with broadswords, double-headed axes, and other sharp weapons, as well as local Angelino thugs with guns all rattled in her mind. She felt her breath catch in her throat again as she felt another surge of adrenaline cause her heart rate to increase and her breathing to go shallow once more as she paled slightly as she braced herself for whatever the answer to her question was.

Arching an eyebrow as the change in her bearing, he saw Brennan shake slightly even as she tried to maintain a physically neutral stance. His voice was still soft as he asked her, "You okay there, Elphie? You don't look so good. Maybe you should come over here and take a load off for a minute or two, huh?"

Wordlessly, Brennan stiffly walked and sat down on the same couch as Spike sat, taking the opposite end of what she knew by mere sight to be a very uncomfortable piece of furniture. Spike took that as a sign that things were worse than he'd initially thought because she did so without a word of protest.

She perched on the edge of the seat and then looked at him. "I'll be fine," she said. "I-I just...it was a long flight, and I'm tired. I wasn't working with a lot of information, and...I need to know what happened to him." She lifted her eyes to meet Spike's once more and then added in a quiet voice, "Can you tell me that? I-I...I need to know. Really, I _need _someone to tell me. Please?"

Nodding at her, Spike said, "Ten nights ago we were on a routine patrol. Gunn and the brooding ponce were going after a crew of vamps that had been attacking idiots as they left this same night club over on Guintess Street around last call. The word on the street was that they were particularly vicious tearing into any groups of revelers that included blonde females. We didn't know it at the time, but the crew had been hired by Wolfram and Hart to get Angel's attention. They wanted his attention focused in one area and figured if there was a string of petite blonde females who had been found sucked dry from extensive wounds to the neck that it might get his attention. I'll save you the more boring details, but suffice to say, their plan to get Angel all riled up worked quite nicely. He took it personally, although I don't really know why. I'm always telling the prat that he's got to learn to compartmentalize, but can he do that? _Noooo_. Absolutely not. He sees a few idiotic chippies that look like Goldilocks drained dry, and he takes it personally. I tried to—"

Spike saw a look of pain cross Brennan's face. It had been a good while since he'd seen her, but in that moment, as he watched successive waves of emotion flicker in her pale eyes—first dread, then relief, then resentful, if immediately contained, hurt—he knew immediately he'd hit a nerve with her. He remembered the last time he'd been truly reckless with her—more than a century earlier, in the spring of 1882—and what a mess she'd made of him then when she hadn't been as good at remaining in control of her emotions and not acting on her ire.

_He stood in front of the fireplace, tapping his booted foot on the edge of the plush fibers of the Oriental carpet that sat in front of the large hearth space. Every minute or so, without trying to seem too obtrusive—or intrusive—he quirked his head just enough so that his eyes could dart to the opposite side of the room and he could see what she was doing. _

_Despite the hour, it was clear she hadn't yet dressed for the evening. Although her hair was styled, piled high about her head with tiny curls framing her face that was colored with makeup that served to make her striking features stand out even more, she still wore a navy blue silk dressing gown to clothe herself. As he thought about it, in the end, he supposed it didn't matter since he knew that a woman such as herself set fashion and rarely followed it. She still sat at her desk, obviously engrossed by the sheaf of onion skin paper that sat in front of her. Finally, she reached out, grabbed a pen from where it sat in its holder, and seemed poised to begin writing. However, instead of dipping it in the inkwell, she let her hand hover over the paper. Never looking away from her desk, the only indication that she'd noticed he'd spent the last hour checking on her was finally conveyed when she spoke._

"_If it is your hope," she said, pronouncing each word in the clipped but patrician dialect of West London that had colored her speech for centuries, "to expedite my decision-making process, then I assure you, further annoying me will not help you achieve that goal. So, I would suggest that you cease in your fidgeting."_

_Unable to help himself, the young vampire's razor-thin patience suddenly snapped. "Oh, for bloody sakes, Brennan," he complained. "I'm sorry!"_

_At his outburst, Brennan lifted her head and finally looked at her visitor. Tilting her head, she kept her voice even as she commented, "Yes, I believe you conveyed that point earlier."_

"_I said I was sorry," he repeated. "And, it's sincere. Please, I swear." He paused, looked at her, hands outstretched in supplication, and then asked, "Don't you believe me?"_

"_I'm sure that your desire to procure the end result that you believe will be achieved should I accept your apology is sincere, yes," she nodded. "Otherwise, I doubt very seriously that you'd put yourself through such humbling measures."_

"_Groveling, love," he nodded at her with a level eye. "Let's call a bloody spade a bloody spade, shall we? We both know I'm groveling."_

_Brennan considered his point and then tilted her head in concession of his point. "Touché, William."_

"_I'm sorry," he repeated. "I'm sorry I did what I did, and I swear to bloody hell that I'll never do it again."_

"_Mmmm hmmm," Brennan said, her blue eyes staring intently as she considered the fact that either William was a very different sort of man than his grandsire or she should've considered the option she'd used with the younger vampire to bring Angelus to heel. "And?"_

"_And..." he began, struggling to know what she wanted. At last, his eyes fell on the spectacular flower arrangement that sat in a vase on the coffee table in front of him. Pointing at it, he said, "And, I mean it. After all, if I wasn't sincere, I wouldn't have shelled out all the brass those roses cost me." He paused again, and then asked, "Darla said you like flowers. That's why I-I...well. Do you...do you like the roses?"_

_Glancing at the two-dozen blood red roses, Brennan smiled as she realized how inflamed Angelus's ire would be if he saw the beautiful flowers in her bedroom, and she told him that they were from Spike. She knew from her recent conversations with Darla_—_who'd had a nasty spat of her own with Angelus a few weeks earlier over the usual grist that fired their most tumultuous arguments, i.e., Darla's allegiance to the Order of Aurelius and the Master_—_that the timid and starry-eyed poet that Drusilla had sired had been fighting with Angelus over the latter's rutting with Dru. In a way, she wondered if that was also a contributing factor as to why William had finally ended up on her doorstep if he had been talking to Darla as he claimed. She didn't put it beyond her friend to suggest that if William wanted metaphorically to stick it to Angelus there would be no better way to do it than by getting Brennan to let him tumble her a time or three. The idea tickled Brennan. Glancing at the expensive roses, she made a mental note to move them to the bedroom the moment William left. Looking back to him, she nodded, "They're very pretty."_

"_And, the chocolate?" he asked, nodding at the box that sat next to the roses. "My mother...well, she...my mum knew quality things because she was a lady_—_just like you. And those chocolates are from her favorite confectioner just off of Old Bond Street. They're really quite good, and not cheap either_—"

_Cutting him off, Brennan nodded, "I'm sure they're fine."_

"_Then, please," William nodded. "Please. I can't stand it anymore. It's been three weeks. Please. Just tell me whatever you want me to do so you'll get rid of it, and I'll do it." He paused and then said, "If the flowers and chocolate aren't good enough...well, bloody hell, normally I'd offer to kill someone for you, but Darla said you like to handle your own dirty work_—_and are pretty good at getting what you need to get done when it needs to get done, too_—_so tell me what else I can do. 'Cause I'll bloody do anything if you'll just get rid of it."_

_Standing up, Brennan abruptly came towards him. She took in the full sight of her handiwork as William turned towards her. A single straight thin, five-inch horn jutted out from the middle of his forehead. The effect was quite comical, she had to admit._

_Seeing her look at her handiwork, William winced. He knew he'd been in trouble the minute he'd walked into the sitting room to find Darla staring at him for a couple of seconds before she smirked and said in her uniquely husky, slightly nasal voice with its colonial accent, 'Is that a horn sticking out of your forehead, love, or are you just happy to see me?' His hand had flown up to his brow and he'd suddenly realized why his head seemed to ache, and it wasn't from too many Islay single malt whiskeys, which made sense considering he hadn't suffered a hangover since he'd been sired by Drusilla. No sooner had Darla fallen into a fit of laughter when Angelus walked into the room, threw his head back and began to snicker. 'I told ya, Darla,' he'd said. 'Wee Willie there doesn't have much to offer you, love, even if he tries to make an advert of it and puts it on proud display in the middle of his fuckin' forehead. You and Dru best stick with real men, mmm? And leave the boys to their wee toys.'_

_He cringed at the thought of all the teasing he'd endured at the hands of his grandsire, most of it suggesting that the dimensions of the horn corresponded perfectly to the dimensions of William's cock, and he swore Drusilla had lost some interest in him since the night he'd shown up with his horn. He'd spent quite a lot of money and time traveling the dusty back alleys of London to try to get other witches and warlocks to remove it, but to no avail. To his forehead it had been stuck, and all of the magicians he'd seen seemed to agree, to his forehead it would stay attached until he got the original practitioner who'd cast the curse to remove it. _

_Thus, William had finally done what Angelus had never been able to do unless physically compelled, and even then such a display of behavior was fleeting in its nature. He'd swallowed his pride, spent a terrible amount of money on roses and chocolates, and gone to Brennan to apologize sincerely. That was how he'd ended up in front of her telling her his tale of woe since she'd cursed him three weeks earlier and why he was truly sorry he'd acted the way he had._

"_Please, Brennan," he begged. "Please, get rid of it. I can't...the amount of bloody razzing I've taken about it since you gave me this horn_—_and I don't just mean Angelus, although that git has given me more than my fair share_—_it's getting embarrassing. No self-respecting vampire takes me seriously. One look at the bloody horn, and they all almost end up wanting to dust themselves from hysterics. And the cock jokes? Well, I can take a lot, but not this. Not anymore. I just can't take it anymore. So, please. Just tell me what you want me to do to get rid of it and consider it done."_

_Brennan considered his words and then crossed her arms. Giving him and assessing stare, Brennan said, "Angelus tells me you're something of a poet."_

_The single statement caught William off-guard. However, he knew it would not be in his best interest's to leave the witch's question unanswered. Looking down at his feet, he shuffled a bit as he answered, "Yeah, I am."_

"_And, I assume you're familiar with whom Roderick McLean is?" Brennan questioned him._

_As soon as she said then name, William's eyes snapped up to meet hers. "That effin' prat? Of course I know who he is. Every poet and writer who's been in London for more than five minutes knows who the effin' wannabe Scots wanker is. What a fuckin' attitude."_

"_And, his poems?" Brennan asked. "Are yours better than his?"_

"_Fuck, yes!" William answered. "I may not be Keats or Shelley or Byron, but I'm far and away better than that tosser'll ever be, ten times over and then some."_

"_Fine," Brennan nodded. "Then I expect you to write me a poem that's better than the one he wrote for the Queen before he took that shot at her last month." She then narrowed her eyes. "And, of course, it goes without saying that if you ever mention anything about me, my tits, and Angelus in the same sentence ever again, you'll think the horn you got was a lucky momento of our acquaintanceship, and I guatantee you'll wish you still had it since you'll be missing one of your other more important protruding members. Understood?"_

_William looked into the witch's eyes. As he studied her, he again thought for the first time that perhaps the two of them weren't so different_—_fools as they were for Angelus and Drusilla respectively if they were making themselves as crazy as they appeared to be over their respective vampire-lovers. However, he knew that now was not the time to raise such an issue. Still, he couldn't help but feel a strange affinity and true type of respect for the witch that he would never underestimate as a dangerous and intelligently wicked creature every again. Instead, he merely nodded, "I understand. No more jokes about you, my grandsire, or your most respectably luscious titties there. Yup. Got it."_

_Flashing him one more look of warning, Brennan held his gaze until he nodded in contrition. Even as she raised her hand, said a few strange words in a soft voice, and a ball of blue energy flew towards William's head, circled once, and then made the horn sticking out of the middle of his forehead disappear, William realized that he needed to be more careful around Brennan...and might be able to even learn a thing or two from her about how to piss off his grandsire if he was lucky._

Spike watched Brennan's rigid jaw grind from one side to the other and back again as her eyes smoldered at hearing the reference to Angel's old lover, the Slayer who'd captured Spike's own immortal heart over the years. His forehead creased as he remembered how many times he'd wondered without ever really being able to understand why his grandsire had fallen so spastasically head over heels for the young Slayer when he had women like Darla and the more urbane, sophisticated, wealthier and powerful witch like Brennan to tempt him. It had never made any sense to him and was just one more among a myriad of reasons he considered Angel to be an unredeemable prat.

He remembered how, even after having the charm dispelled, he'd been so angry at Angelus, he could still feel his blood boil over what the elder vampire had done to him simply because he could. Spike had seethed for weeks afterwards, watching his grandsire through slitted eyes, plotting his vengeance. Spike's expression soured as he thought of how badly things had turned with his sire, Drusilla, whom he'd loved, and how it sickened him to hear her moans and cries as she shared her bed with Angelus. His feelings of humiliation waxed into a deep loathing, and he swore he would exact retribution, if only for the sake of his own honor. _"If you really want to make him suffer," Darla had told him, when he'd sought her out after learning that she was still fighting with Angelus over her going to answer the summons of the Master, "there's one thing you can definitely do." _He recalled with a smirk how he'd made it a point to cross Brennan's path as often as he could, and how he'd often watched, coming there to seek inspiration for the poem that she'd demanded of him. He grinned as he remembered how he often saw her nude silhouette from the street below as she undressed behind her gauzy inner drapes and how that had made him lust after her even more. It had made it a pleasure more than a necessity really, when he remembered how he'd called on her a week later with another two dozen long-stem red roses to barter his entrance to her presence with the promised poem of his penitence firm in hand. His smiled faintly as he thought of how her cheeks and ears had flushed a deep scarlet when she read the poem he'd penned—which turned out to be a lover's lament about his grandsire and the woman he longed for—a woman, by the by, other than Brennan with whom Angelus had been creasing the sheets when he was not tumbling with Darla and his childe, Drusilla.

In the end, that—more than anything else Spike could have done to or take from Angelus—had caused his grandsire the most misery.

Realizing he'd stopped mid-sentence as he got lost in a gush of old memories, he retreated from the thicket of his own thoughts. Spike blinked a couple of times and refocused his attention on telling her the rest of what had happened to Angel that had resulted in his accident without causing her any more inadvertent angst.

"Anyway, it turns out the vamps were just decoys," he continued with a firm nod in her direction. "Their job was to bang us up and tire us out—which the bleeding tossers did right well for four bloody nights. Then, instead of hanging back to regroup like Gunn and I wanted to so we could recoup, Angel insisted we go back out on short rest. But he thinks he's the la-di-da'ing friggin' grand poobah, so out we bloody went did and that was five nights ago. Turns out that the vamps—who were ready and waiting for us once again—were just being used as cover to lure Angel into running smack dab into the lair of a Ry'car'm demon." He stopped his retelling of the pertinent details to see if Brennan understood the significance of what he'd just shared with her. When she continued to look at him, her face still devoid of emotion, he decided to err on the side of caution. Nodding at her, he explained, "Now, I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure in your travels, Elphie, but in case you haven't, it's a fairly nasty spot of business."

Brennan's brows knit and she shook her head slightly, and her lips parted briefly as if she were going to say something. But after a few moments, she held her silence, urging the vampire to continue with a sharp upward jerk of her chin.

"These Ry'Car'm types are real buggers," he explained. "When you first see 'em, they don't look like much. Five feet, six, maybe five feet eight inches tall. Fairly solidly built—perhaps thirteen, fourteen stone. Nothing freakish, just husky, thick-necked buggers with creepy bloodshot, fiery-orange eyes, like they've got some kind o' liver disorder, ya know? So McBroody and DJ Grumpy see this guy and think, 'Big fuckin' deal, we can take this tosser and be done in time to catch the ten o'clock news.' Well..."

Brennan blinked and reached up to tuck an errant lock of hair behind her ear. "Let me guess," she said grimly. "There was more there than meets the eye."

Spike sighed and shook his head. "Aye," he confirmed. "So Angel and Gunn rush in with the usual complement of swords and battle axes ready to turn ol' Pumpkin Eyes into mincemeat pie. Excellent plan, except—according to Gunn—the second they get within arm's-length of the bugger, those eyes flashed an' all of a sudden, this guy's lovely skin gets dry and crackly, then turns to full-on scales. And I'm not talking about little cute Geico gecko-type talking lizard scales. No, sir'ee. We're talking armadillos-on-fuckin'-steroids layers of armored plate. The sword and battle axe bit didn't do fuck all—just bounced off, more or less. And this wee tosser may have had to look up to make eye contact with the brooding ponce and his grumpy homeboy, but he was strong, and that was even before he opened up his mouth and showed his would-be pearly whites were really three rows of fangs on the top and matching ones on the bottom sharpened to points. He apparently had really bad breath, too—damn near caused Gunn to pass out from the sulfuric fumes when the bugger opened his mouth. But it wasn't just his napalm-breath that was strong—as soon as Gunn moved in, the bugger reached out, grabbed his forearm and gave 'im a wee squeeze with his hand, and..."

Spike nibbled the inside of his lip as he saw the witch's face blanch.

He shrugged and said, "Angel, strong as he is...he didn't stand a bleedin' chance, love."

He stopped again, mentally cursing himself when he saw Brennan wince at his description of the demon they'd faced, particularly since the demon had almost been successful at doing what no one else had been able to do in over 250 years despite many better people trying to accomplish the same goal—killing Angel. But, still convinced that Brennan might developed have some weird magicky mojo way to read his mind or some other way to find out if he was holding back on her, Spike again decided honesty in this particular case was the best policy. Waiting for a moment so that she could compose herself, it was only when she looked back at him expectantly that he continued his story.

"Anyway," he said. "We got separated in the melee of the vamps leading us to the demon's lair...and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but being the headstrong idiot that he is, the tosser formerly known as Captain Forehead talked Gunn into not waiting for backup until I caught up with them in the center of the lair. He said they couldn't wait since the demon had another hostage he was threatening to kill if Angel didn't fight. There was a girl—seventeen or eighteen, tops—another young blonde twit that the vamps had picked up from the street earlier that night and left for the demon to use as bait. Of course, 'cause he always has to be the effin' hero, Angel went in to save her, Gunn followed, and the two of 'em ended up hashing it out with the Ry'car'm demon by themselves. They did manage to save the girl, but Gunn got a broken arm...and, well, the ponce ended up gettin' himself tossed out one of the building's third floor windows. He, ummm...he fell and..."

Spike's voice trailed off for a minute as he tried to figure out the best way to tell Brennan the rest of what she needed to know without telling her too much. Finally, he made the choice to be honest, but to keep things as simple as possible and only give her more specific details if she asked the right questions. "He hit his head and was out of it for a while. By the time I finally figured what was what, the Blue Meanie had found me, and we were trying to decide the best way to find out where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had gone. Eventually—"

He paused as he remembered how he and Ilyria had stumbled upon Gunn cradling the unconscious Angel. They found the tall, young demon-hunter sitting there cross-legged on the pavement with Angel's lifeless body draped over his lap, brushing a lock of blood-matted hair off the ex-vampire's forehead before his hand moved to Angel's neck as he felt for a pulse despite his own injuries. When Spike looked down at the pair, he cringed at the sight of Gunn's shirt, which was soaked with blood from where Angel's lacerated scalp had brushed against his chest. Then his eyes swiveled and he saw the way Gunn's free arm dangled uselessly across Angel's hip, bent at an unnatural angle a couple of inches above the wrist.

Tilting his head back at Brennan, he shook his head slightly, almost as if to push the images that echoed in his mind away before he continued, "When we finally found them, Gunn was gettin' up to try to hold off the demon. Ilyria took care of him in short order...pretty awesomely too. By then, Angel had already been out for ten, maybe twelve minutes. Then, Ilyria, in what was truly an emasculating display that I'm going to highly enjoy telling Angel about now that he's deigned to rejoin the land of the living, picked him up like he was a sack of spuds. A little bit after that—I'm not sure when, pet, since things kinda started to blur, sorry—we got him to the closest hospital that we could find, i.e., here. When the admitting nurse asked me who he was as they were wheelin' him in...well, the best I could come up with was Bobby Kent. I didn't want to use his real name just in case the Senior Partners were already getting ready to send in some followup heavy hitters to finish the job. But, as far as I know, they either don't know the demon failed, and Humpty Dumpty didn't get his shell cracked for good, or they're just biding their time. In any case, that's why we've been on shift here, watching out just to make things stay on the up and up."

He studied her for another minute, trying to figure out what she was thinking as he finished telling her the information she'd wanted him to give her. When she looked away from him, lost in her own thoughts, he couldn't help himself as he added, "You know, the name I gave them? The hospital wankers? When they asked who he was? And, I told 'em Bobby Kent? For some bloody reason, it stuck in my head that this is where RFK choked it, and so I went with it." He stopped, shook his head, and then waited until Brennan was looking back at him. When they made eye contact, blue eyes locked on blue, he told her, "You know I wouldn't have called you if I hadn't thought it was pretty bad to begin with, Elphie. At the time, we had no clue he was gonna wake up. That's why...well, you know. That's why I finally made the call to you."

Letting out a slow breath, Brennan nodded, "I know."

"There was..." Spike's voice trailed off, as he suddenly realized how he was initially going to say his next thought might not be the best choice. Taking a few seconds to debate if he should censor himself or not, eventually he decided to say fuck it and went with his original turn of phrase since it seemed, at that point, that Angel was going to pull through. "You know," he began. "It turns out that since he's been de-vamped, the Senior Bint doesn't have quite as hard a noggin as we all thought he did," he explained. "He cracked it pretty good. I think there was some kind of closed fracture or other, but it turns out the busted skull was the least of his problems, and was the swelling that we've been waiting to come down. For a long while, we didn't know how it was gonna go and things looked pretty bad." Spike shrugged and adjusted the collar of his leather duster. "We really didn't expect him to take this type of turn though...not yet. Not now."

He then stared at Brennan again, itching to ask a question that had long burned in his mind to seek an answer for, but one for which he'd never had the courage to ask either Angel or Brennan. When he again saw the witch's piercing blue eyes staring at his in keen assessment—as if she noted the way he was probing but, with a firm pursing of her lips, refused to divulge anything—he again lost what nerve he had to speak the single question that had remained unasked by him for some many years. Instead, he went with a more roundabout way, trying to see if he could unsuspectingly lure her into volunteering the answer to his question herself. "You know, Elpie," he said. "It was almost as if once you were on the move, he somehow knew he had to get his sorry arse in gear and get on with the getting on of waking up. He only came out of it a few hours ago, otherwise I would've called as soon as we knew anything. But, you were already in the air by that point, and—"

Brennan considered Spike's words, an eyebrow arching as she again thought on the interesting observation he'd made about the timing of Angel's finally waking up. However, knowing now was not the time to think on it, she filed the thought away for future reflection. Instead, she concentrated on the here and now of the moment she was in, swallowing once, before she reached out. In an uncharacteristic move that probably revealed more emotion and more vulnerability than she'd intended, she lightly touched Spike's hand as she said, "Thank you for remembering to call me, William. It...it means a lot."

He flashed her a strange look at the use of his old name, and he couldn't help but smile faintly at hearing her use his so-called Christian name that no one in about a century had called him by. He arched an eyebrow slightly as he thought about the times he'd crossed paths with her over the years, going all the way back to London when he'd first made her acquaintance at a dinner party thrown by his great-grandsire, Darla. Dressed in finery to rival Darla's own, Brennan had caught his eye immediately because on account of her unique sense of style—always fashionable, but always sporting a certain distinctive flair of her own.

But more striking than the clothes she wore was the piercing glint in her eyes and the way her glossy lips curved in a faint smirk as she moved from conversation to conversation. Spike grinned at the thought of what else he'd seen those glossy lips do when he'd accidentally walked into the room that had served as his grandsire's office and found those lips working Angelus over before he'd used his forearm to swat her mouth away from his cock, grunted as he jerked her into a standing position, turned her around, bent her over his desk with a low growl and proceeded to plunge into her again and again. He knew she'd had some sort of encounter at some point with Angelus because of an off-hand comment he overheard Darla make once, but it wasn't until decades later that he realized that the witch was more than a one-time or even occasional lay for his flamboyantly promiscuous grandsire. Spike thought about what he'd seen after the W&H Halloween party a couple of years before, and seeing Angel's hips jerk and his eyes roll back in his head as she used those same lips to suck him off in his office as Lorne slept off his mystical hangover in the corner. He still wasn't sure how Angel managed to get laid with a woman who meant as much to him as Brennan did, without unleashing Angelus, given the rather tender (if nauseating to him) words he'd heard his grandsire utter to Brennan in the office that night before Spike had left them to their business. He shrugged to himself, sure that, whatever it was between Angel and his witch lover, it was more than merely an arrangement based solely on the need to fuck one another's brains out or a relationship of any other type of convenience.

Still, he nodded at her in gentle encouragement as he said, "You should go see him, Elphie. See for yourself what I'm saying is true. We both know you won't feel better until you do. And, I'd be happy to kick the runtling out if you want some alone time."

Shaking her head at the thought of potentially finally confronting Connor after all this time, in addition to the fact that she wasn't certain if she was ready to see Angel in the weakened state she knew he'd be in given his room was in ICU, Brennan struggled to find a good explanation to justify declining Spike's invitation. At last, she said, "No, I—I need...his chart. I need to see his chart first, I think."

Almost as if he'd conjured it, Spike reached into his duster and pulled out a rumpled looking goldenrod document envelope. He had gotten to know her well enough over the years to know she'd never be satisfied with hearing his second-hand redux of a doctor's explanation of Angel's condition, so he'd finagled a way to get his hands on the primary source materials. Proffering it to her, he said, "It doesn't have the latest notes from this morning, but if you want them, I'll get them. Just say the word." He shifted his hips on the waiting room couch as he recalled the private consultation he'd had with the lovely ICU nurses, Oksana, in a supply closet in order to secure a copy of Angel's chart, and discovered how truly convenient a garment scrub pants were when time and space were at a premium. He savored the thought for a few moments, losing himself briefly in the image of the Ukrainian beauty's bare ass before blinking it away and bringing his focus back to the worried-looking witch seated next to him.

Brennan stared at the envelope for a minute, took it with a shaky hand, opened it, pulled out a stack of photocopies, and then began to read. Instantly, words like 'comminuted fracture'...'closed head injury'...'tear in the dura mater'...and 'increased intracranial pressure' jumped out at her. Brennan didn't know how long she sat there going through the notes. It was a long enough time period, however, that her back was starting to ache when she finally gathered up the stack of black and white photocopies that Spike had somehow procured and shoved them back into the envelope.

In all the time that she'd sat there reading the chart, Spike hadn't moved a single inch. When she looked up at him, he finally nodded, "Wotcher, Elphie."

Taking a deep breath, Brennan said, "He's really awake?" She tilted her head as she nodded, "I mean, you saw him with your own two eyes? He's really awake?"

"Awake?" Spike asked.

Brennan slowly nodded.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Awake, definitely. With it? Not really. He still isn't getting why it's taking him so long to heal if he's been here for almost a week. I think everything's still there, he's just a bit outta sorts. He's kinda forgotten the whole Shanshu thing that made him human again post-apocalypse."

Spike's eyebrows went up and his forehead creased as he recalled standing at the door as Buffy Summers walked into the room to see Angel. He'd been fuming ever since he'd seen the big doors to the Neuro ICU swing open and a familiar, green-eyed blond stride through the doors with determined steps, hardly slowing to acknowledge him with a curt nod before making her way to Angel's room. As soon as he overcome his initial surprise at seeing her there, he'd to suppress the overwhelming desire to stuff Connor's head down a toilet and jumped up to follow her in the room. Angel's dark brown eyes had just fluttered open for the first time just a couple of hours earlier, and so Spike found himself standing at the door to Angel's room, watching and listening as Buffy sat down in the chair next to the bed. Angel had blinked a couple of times, then turned his head to regard her with a furrowed brow and his usual sign of puzzlement—holding the tip of his tongue between his lips, a gesture so stereotypically Angel that it gave Spike a measure of hope to see him use it—before he opened his mouth to speak. "Bren," he said in a raspy voice. "What are you doing here? I'm sorry, lass, I...I just...I'm sorry...but, I...I-I..." Angel's voice trailed off as he narrowed his eyes and stared at the woman seated at his bedside. "Bren?" he whispered again. "No, Angel," she'd said. "It's me, Angel. It's Buffy. I'm here." His glazed over eyes blinked a few times before he'd rolled over and merely asked, "Where's Bren?" Buffy's green eyes hardened and her face blanched, then flushed with anger as she stood up and stormed out of the room without saying another word to Angel.

"He forgot a lot of things," Spike said vaguely.

"But," Brennan said as she wet her bottom lip with her tongue. "He's going to be okay?"

"Yeah, love," Spike nodded. "This time, sure. Eventually. Never fear. All too soon Captain Prat will be out making my life and others hell with that brooding signature style that only he can pull off as either a vamp or a human. Why?"

Suddenly, Brennan stood up and gathered her bag to her chest even before Spike had finished speaking. "I-I...I just needed to know for certain that he's going to be okay."

"He'll be right as rain, Elphie," Spike said, giving her a strange look. "Come on, love—don't take my word for it. We both know you don't have to trust me." He jerked his head in the direction of Angel's room. "Why don't you go see for yourself?" he asked, his words edged with a plaintiveness that he'd never heard in his own voice. "I'm sure—"

"No," Brennan suddenly snapped, shaking her head as she cut him off with a sharp look. When she looked at Spike, any of the previous vulnerability and weakness that he'd seen had disappeared. In it's place was a rather cold and calculating demeanor that made Spike remember just how dangerous a woman Brennan could be if and when she chose to be. It made him feel uneasy, and feeling that feeling just served to annoy him even more. But, wisely, he bit his tongue as Brennan continued speaking. "That is...if he's going to be okay, then I-I..." Her voice only faltered for a moment. When she spoke again, her words were confident and impenetrable. "He doesn't need to know I was here," Brennan told him. "He'll hate it if he knew I was here," she said with a nod. "I-I...thank you for letting me know, Spike. I appreciate it more than I can say, but...I have to go now. I need to be somewhere."

She turned to leave, and even before Spike could call out her name or register a response to her actions, Brennan was gone.

* * *

She'd never felt fear when she stood in the presence of evil, and that, perhaps—among many, _many _other things—was what had made Him want to possess her so badly.

This particular opportunity was no different when she called Him forth. Initially, He'd been somewhat surprised that she'd even summoned Him since it had been so long for her since they'd had any type of meaningful exchange—a century or more, by her reckoning, even though that time for Him had passed in the blink of an eye. Still, He'd been surprised when she conducted the ritual to bring Him forth, and He'd seen her standing in the middle of her living room, her wooden floor defaced by her a chalk-white pentagram, a haphazard salt circle, and a ring of lighted white pure beeswax tapers in which she stood in the middle of. The surprise alone was enough that He'd have stayed long enough to listen to her proposal even if He hadn't missed her in some way, this one woman who'd been one of the smartest and most skilled creatures of her type that He'd ever trafficked with and so desperately wanted to possess. When she'd found a way to meet the letter of the bargain He'd struck with her centuries before, and yet abscond with her soul no closer to being His than it was before, He'd been furious, and He'd made it His business to find a way to beat her. He knew that she was no different than other beings, mortal or otherwise, in that she had a weakness. Once He realized what that weakness was, He patiently waited for the right opportunity to exploit it, swearing He wouldn't let her slip through His fingers again.

_Mine, _He swore. _You will be mine yet, Mistress._

For her part, Brennan let her adrenaline and logic and rationality keep her fear from even registering in her conscious mind as she explained why she'd called Him, what deal she wanted to make, and why He should ultimately agree to her proposition given how little it might appear that He'd benefit from exerting any effort on her behalf whatsoever. He was quiet for a minute, as He considered what she'd said, His bright red eyes surveying her. Her blue eyes met His, refusing as ever to be cowed, and her blatant challenge to Him even as she asked for something from Him made Him smile before He finally spoke.

"You make a persuasive argument," He said in a cultured voice that Brennan had come to know all too well over the years. "But, you still haven't answered the one question that you have to know that I would ask before I'd consent to make any new bargains between us, Mistress Brennan." He paused and then gave her what He knew was an even more charming smile than the last one had been as He asked, "Why should I do this for you?"

Brennan had been expecting the question for some time. And, as a result, she had several answers ready to give Him when He asked, even though she hadn't known until that exact moment which one she would use to try to sway Him to agree to her proffered plan.

"Because," Brennan responded simply. "It's always been all about the deal with You. And, we both know that I caused You great ire when I found a way to fulfill the terms of our original contract before the original five hundredth anniversary of that bargain, and in so doing, thwart what You thought would be an easy conquest of me. We both know that You never expected me to find an evil immortal to whom I'd willing give part of my soul and who wouldn't actually try to destroy me with it before the deadline was up. I both surprised and greatly aggravated You when I met the requirement, and You weren't able to select a keeper as you'd originally intended. Thus, from a certain perspective, I won and You lost. Whether You want to admit that or not, it's the truth, and it's irked You all this time—so much so that You've been biding Your time to figure out a way to punish me. That's why You tortured Angel for a hundred years when You had the chance, isn't it? You've tried to get to me through him before, but You ultimately failed at that too because he wouldn't give me up." She stopped, taking a confident step closer towards Him and said, "But, now? Now? Well, _now_ things are a bit different, aren't they?"

"How so?" He asked with a subtle tilt of His head in her direction that showed He was listening very carefully to every word she said with clear interest.

"So, that means...you're interested in what I have to say?" Brennan blinked at Him as if such an answer was blatantly apparent.

He continued to study her for a minute or two and then nodded. "I'm always interested in everything about you, Mistress Brennan," He responded simply. "And, I have been since before you were a metaphorical twinkle in those very blue eyes that your quite cunning, if very tedious, father has always had—particularly since it's been so long since you and I've conversed, let alone made any deals. So, yes. Say your piece in full since you know that I'm listening. You have my complete and undivided attention, I assure you."

Again, red eyes met blue. Again, Brennan refused to back down. At last, however, when the heavy silence between the pair began to wear thin, Brennan conceded that she needed to give into His request if she ever wanted to make any progress towards her goal, as distasteful as the prospect of doing what He wanted in any way, shape, or form galled her. "Very well," Brennan nodded. "If You agree to this, then while it's a small bargain, it's one that won't take any significant time, effort, or energy on Your part. It's a trivial thing, for You, and we both know that. But, despite how simple a thing it will be to You to do, what You'll get from it in return is not inconsequential. If You do this, we both know that I'm now giving You a chance to exact a certain amount of retribution against me since You know what doing this will do to me. I'll be hurt, I'll be in pain, and the only person I'll have to blame is myself. And, You'll get to witness all of that, which we both know is something that You've always seemed to enjoy. It's something to be savored for You, I'm sure, the paltry and egotistical human witch rendered low finally...and by her own hand over a thing as trivial as her feelings for another human being." Tilting her head as she took another step towards Him, she added, "You can't honestly tell me that the offer, as I've presented it to You, doesn't have a certain...attractiveness to You, even if the deal is minor compared to some of the larger ones we've struck in the past."

He stared at her, His red eyes narrowed as He licked his lips. Brennan felt her heart flutter and her face quickly paled as she gazed with trepidation into His face, which had suddenly turned stony, His expression unreadable. She swallowed, closing her eyes as she tried to steady her thundering heart. She knew He knew her state of mind though she kept her lips pressed into a firm line. Angel could smell fear from a half mile away. She knew that The One, a figure of incredible power that He wielded on a cosmic scale, could sense her fear rolling off of her in waves. Worse, she knew, was the fact that He knew her desperation, that she would not have summoned Him had she believed there was some other way to accomplish her goals. That He knew her fear and her desperation made each even more acute. She felt a sickening dread roiling in her belly as she awaited His response.

He was quiet for another moment before He wagged His brows, then shrugged and asked, "Why?"

Brennan quirked an eyebrow and stared at Him blankly for a minute before she said, "What do You mean why? I don't understand. I just told You why."

He shook His head with a wry smile and corrected her. "No," he said. "The question isn't why do you think that I would strike this bargain with you. What I want to know is...why would you try to make this deal...for him?"

Brennan was quiet for a moment, and then despite her best efforts to keep it from happening, her brow furrowed slightly as a small bit of emotion cracked her face. She knew it was pointless to lie to Him in that moment—particularly as she suspected He knew it anyway, but was making her say it just to hear it—so she simply told Him the truth.

"Because...I love him."

His bright red eyes stared into her cool blue ones for a moment as He contemplated her answer. He was quiet again for several minutes before He exhaled slowly and finally said, "What you would do for him—it's a great cost to bear, merely for the sake of an emotion you feel...merely for love? Especially when you know what you'll be giving up and as long as you understand that while I most certainly can do this, there's no guarantee it will work...last for as long as you want it to, Mistress Brennan. There's no guarantee that once I weave such a spell as to how long it will last. The chances that it would be forever are almost nil. Surely you know that."

"To see him safe and happy," she replied slowly. "It doesn't matter what the cost is to me. Whatever it is...it would be worth it. And, I have to believe that for however long it lasts, it will be longer than if I just sit back and didn't do anything. Because, we both know that if nothing is done, he'll be dead within a year." She swallowed and looked down at her feet, then raised her eyes again to meet his gaze. "Probably sooner," she said.. "So, yes. Whatever the cost is, I believe that it's worth it."

When she'd finished speaking, He inclined His head towards her. He then nodded slightly before speaking again. "You speak for yourself in that last sentence, of course," He told her. "But...what about _him? _You take great personal choice out of his hands if you make this deal," He said thoughtfully. "We both know your own powers are no small thing. Surely there must be other options you've considered. I'll grant you the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart are no small trio of enemies for anyone to have, let alone a mere mortal such as him. But, if you care about him as you say you do, we both know, my dear, that you're no mere mortal. We both know that you possess a very considerable set of skills of your own that could be levied against them in his defense. So, since that's the case, why not simply consult with him? It's true he's not as powerful as he once was since he's fulfilled the terms of the Shanshu Prophecy and now has shuffled back into his mortal coil back once more, but surely together, you might be able to foil their efforts to exact retribution against him. Why not take what chances you can with that?"

"Because," Brennan suddenly snapped as she took a step towards Him. "That's not a risk I'm willing to take with him. I can't take a chance with him. Not where he's concerned. I can't. _I won't_. I've almost lost him so many times..." Her voice trailed off as she felt a wave of nausea wash over her, then she shrugged and continued. "I can't even keep count anymore, but we both know the close calls have increased exponentially since the year he spent in hell with the rest of Los Angeles when the Senior Partners at Wolfram and Hart consigned him there. But, now that he's actually managed to thwart another one of their traps, it's only a matter of time before they come at him again, with something even worse than before, and eventually they will succeed. They don't suffer fools any more than You do. He pissed them off with what he did, how he handled things, and that's made it personal for them in the past year even more than it had been before he went to work for them. So, we both know that they'll keep coming at him, striking at him through any means they can. And, we've also both been around long enough to know that since they've made him public enemy number one, and since he's mortal now, he's even more vulnerable to their powers and influences than he was before, so it's only a matter of time before they succeed. You know that they'll find a way to make certain he never lives and gets a chance to enjoy what he's always wanted—a normal life."

Brennan felt a burning in her nostrils but closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she pushed the emotions down and away. "Make no mistake," she said. "I've thought about all the options, all the potential alternatives." She thought about the long conversation that she'd had the night before with another powerful witch, a friend she'd known for centuries and loved like a mother, and how she'd come away with a heavy heart but sure of what she had to do when they'd parted ways. "I wouldn't be here, with You, if I had any other viable choice. I'm doing what I have to do to protect him. I refuse to let him die. I refuse...I absolutely _refuse _to lose him again. After all that's happened to him, You're damn right that I'm going to do everything that I can to ensure that he finally gets the chance to live the life he's earned. The Powers that Be said he'd done enough when they granted him his life back. He has his life once more, and he deserves nothing less than to live it to its fullest...even if he's too damn stubborn to realize it himself by walking away from the fight. So, I'm going to do whatever I have to do to protect him and see that he's happy."

"Even if it means you're giving up your own happiness?" He countered, His words precise and purposeful, said in that moment to elicit as strong and painful a response from her as possible.

Brennan's jaw tightened as she nodded. "Yes," she replied. "As long as they have memory of him...if anyone has any memory of him as still being alive, then I know that Wolfram and Hart will find some way to come after him. And when they do, they will unleash all the weapons at their disposal to destroy him. So, yes, even if I have to give up my own happiness to save him...then, yes. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

For a split second, the thought crossed her mind—and not for the first time since she'd bound herself to the idea of going to Him for assistance—that maybe once all was said and done, it wouldn't be so bad anyway. The pain she'd feel would be temporary, because once the spell took effect, she wouldn't remember him so there would be no loss or emptiness to which her pain could attach. The thought brought her a momentary feeling of relief.

However, Almost as if He could hear it, his thin lips curled into an evil smile on His devious face, revealing some of His inherent cruelty before He spoke again. "Ahh, no, no, no," he tsked her. "Not so fast there, Mistress Brennan."

"What?" she blinked up at Him.

"You make assumptions that you shouldn't," He said with a shake of His head. "If I agree to do this—and I'm not saying that I will—but if I do, then who said anything about everyone, including yourself, forgetting him would be the way I would choose to fulfill the terms of your proposal?"

A pained looked crossed Brennan's face as her heart began to race. "But, I-I..."

"You didn't think I'd make it _that _easy for you, did you?" He asked, laughing as He reveled in the turmoil she was feeling. "You won't forget. No," he said as He looked her straight in the eyes. "No, of course you won't forget. If I did that, it would be too easy—and too simple." He laughed. "No," he said. "If I do this thing you ask, the one person who will most assuredly remember every painful detail will be _you_, my dear. After all, when you love someone and want to do something to protect them as you claim, surely you know that there's always a risk. There's always a burden. There's always a price to be paid. So, no, you won't forget, Mistress Brennan. You'll never forget. You'll remember everything. Besides—"

He paused for a beat before He continued, an open-mouthed grin on his face as he saw her face blanch at his words.

"Just in case the minor fact escaped you," he said. "You know if I agree to the terms of this deal, his possession of your _thumetikon _means he will have to be near you. He may not be an immortal anymore, but even I can't break the terms of our original deal. You gave it into his keeping, and into his keeping it will stay."

"I-I..."

"It's an odd twist, I'll grant you," He said, cutting of her halting response. "I can't really recall there ever being such a loophole where an evil immortal acted as a custodian of such a thing, but in the course of such custodial acts, he became a mortal before he'd relieved himself of such an onerous task as the one with which he'd originally been charged." He stopped, trying to see if He could recall such a situation. After another minute, unable to do so, He shrugged His broad shoulders, and then commented, "It should be interesting to see what the unintended consequences will be from that little wrinkle that the Powers that Be—irksome, nagling interferers that they are and have always been—have seen fit to toss into our understanding with one another since I believe I'm not telling any tales out of school that your tie to the once and future ensouled vampire has been fated by them."

He shot her a devious grin that revealed He knew more about the subject of Brennan and Angel than what He was saying—or at least wanted her to think so. He seemed to confirm her assumption when He added in a taunting voice, "Of course, that's another story for another time, I think."

"Fine," Brennan told Him, anger flushing her face as she nodded at Him, unable to any longer suppress the frustration she felt at being toyed with in such a manner. "I knew You wouldn't make this easy, so that's fine. Do what you want to me—"

"Oh, have no worries on that account, Mistress," He laughed. "I'm going to. One of these days, I promise, I'm going to. But, for now...let's settle on the finer points of _this _deal, hmmm?"

"I agree," she nodded. "So, let's talk terms."

"Agreed," He responded simply as He slightly inclined his head in concession to her suggestion.

"Then, let's start with the simple things, shall we?" Brennan began. "I get what I want for him, which you already know. You get to see me suffer because I'll be the only one who remembers who he is, and I'll have to live with the fact that he has no memory of who I am...or what we were, what we had with one another, and that I have no one to blame but myself for the position I'm in every time I see him. I believe that about covers it all, don't You?"

"Indeed," He replied with a twinkle in his eye. "But, there's more to it than that, my dear. Surely, you know that."

"There always is with You," Brennan scoffed with a roll of her blue eyes. "What else?"

"After a suitable period of...readjustment," He began. "He'll find his way back to you. He won't be able to help himself. He'll be drawn to you because of his unwitting guardianship, no matter what set of circumstances that bring him to you in his new reality. He'll find a way to come for you, to find you, to know you."

"But?" Brennan pressed, suddenly feeling a twisting sensation in her stomach as if the shaky floor on which she stood could give out at any second, letting her freefall into an unending abyss of blackness below.

"But," He said with a dark chuckle. "You take great actions to contravene his own free will on this day. As you know, Mistress, that is no small thing. As such, in this—as in all things—there must be balance."

"What kind of balance?" she asked, arching an eyebrow in clear suspicion of what He was about to tell her.

"The fine print, so to speak, in our deal is this," He said as He took a small step in her direction.

Suddenly, Brennan knew He wasn't being cruel or vindictive or even taunting her in the malicious ways He'd always enjoyed teasing her over the years. His matter-of-fact shift in demeanor told her that He was telling her the simple truth of things as He spoke in that moment—no more and no less.

"The bit of magic I'll weave for you will accomplish everything that you've stipulated and more. But, it will only be effective—it will _only _hold, so to speak—as long as you never again impose your will on him unilaterally. You must never again take away from him what you've stolen on this day. You must always bow to _his _choices, _his _preferences, _his _decisions from this point on, and if you don't—whether it's in five days, five months, or five years or more from now—well, if you don't, that'll be it. Your actions will render our deal null and void. At the point that you once again take the onus of choice from him, at point, he'll remember _everything_...and he will no longer be safe from Wolfram and Hart. People will begin to remember him again and will wonder what happened to Angel, and eventually, someone _will _come looking for him. Maybe it will be a friend, more likely it will be an enemy." He shrugged noncommittally. "Who can say for certain? But, in either case, after that occurs, it's only a matter of time before Wolfram and Hart will find him, and they will kill him. More importantly..."

He paused, narrowing His eyes as He smirked at the rigidly pained expression on her face.

"He'll know what you did to him. He'll remember _everything_. He'll remember how you betrayed him, how you stole the greatest gift any human being has from him—free will, Mistress Brennan. He'll know that you acted in selfish and self-centeredness because of what _you _wanted."

"No," Brennan shook her head furiously as she felt her cheeks flush at His implication. "I'm not doing this for me. It has nothing to do with what I want. It's...it's just for him. For him. That's all. I'm doing this _for him_."

"For him?" He asked again. "Or, _because of_ him?" He paused, His face retaining its thoughtful look as He added, "It's a fine distinction, I grant you, but an important one nonetheless." Looking up at her, He waited for her to say something. When Brennan remained tight-lipped, He shrugged again. "Ahh, well. In either case, it's an important part for you to consider before you sign your name on the dotted line so to speak. Because, and well—you can take this for what it's worth since I'm not exactly a man, but..." He stopped, looked down at Himself, and then shrugged. "Well, you get the point. But, anyway, as a man? I know that, as a man, if the woman who allegedly had been in love with me for as long as you claim to have loved him took away from me what you're taking from him, I doubt that I could ever forgive such a woman for such a brutal and blatant transgression against me. And, as we both know that I know something of him...knowing the type of man he is? Well, I know this man of yours—fairly well, since we spent many years in one another's company, in fact." He grinned and cocked his head to the side as he licked his lips. "I know him to be a man of great loyalty and a stubborn sense of honor. Foolishly stubborn, in fact."

He rolled His red eyes, then laughed sardonically. "In any case, every man has his breaking point, yes? Even this one, who seems to have a penchant for loving stubborn women—particularly those who inevitably betray him by euphemistically stabbing him in the back. Yes, you're both like that, you know. He loves you, you claim to love him, and then once you've betrayed him, I somehow always end up dealing with you all on more than one occasion in the end. So, I feel fairly confident when I say that I highly doubt Angel will ever be able to forgive you, either. This thing you do, if he ever finds out what you've done, I daresay it might destroy everything you've built with him. _All of it_, Mistress. So, think carefully. Nothing's final yet. All we've done, as far as I'm concerned, until signatures are affixed, is to have a delightful chat here. Nothing more than that need occur today. You can still walk away." He lifted his blazing red eyes to meet her in challenge. Once again, as He knew she wouldn't, Brennan didn't look away. Giving her a sly smile, He continued, "But, if you don't want to walk away, I just want to make absolutely certain you have full knowledge of the risks of your proposal. You know me—I'm all about the deal. But, I like My deals to be fair—all of them...above board, so to speak. They are all beyond reproach. So, consider this our period of full disclosure. And, now that I've fully disclosed the proverbial fine print to you, Mistress Brennan, I ask you—do you understand?"

"Do I understand what?" Brennan asked.

Smacking His lips as He relished outlining the terms of the deal for her, He said, "I just want you to understand, Mistress Brennan...if you _ever, _in any way, ever again contravene his free will, everything that you've sacrificed All the pain and suffering you went through for him? All the pain and suffering he'll have endured because of you? Well—all of it..._all of it_ will have been for _nothing _if you ever unilaterally impose your will on him in any way, shape, or form ever again. The magic I wrought will be undone, reality will shift back, and he'll remember what happened. And, once that occurs he'll still be in danger, and moreover, I do believe he'll be less than pleased to know what you'll have taken, what you'll have _stolen _from him really once the world right's itself for him...assuming, of course, he's off strong enough stuff that he'll be able to put his world back together once the stopper that's preventing him from falling down the long and winding hole to Wonderland is pulled out from under him. That, my dear, is what I'm attempting to discern if you understand.."

"That won't happen," Brennan said firmly. "I don't need to worry because I won't let it happen. I'll never hurt him again like that. I don't care what I have to do, but I won't give him this life just to tear it away from him at some later point."

"Be careful," He cautioned her again. "Think carefully. Be certain that you understand the risks. It's not as if I suggest you'd do it intentionally. Indeed, I think if and when it occurs, it will be far from intentional. I think, in a moment of weakness, you'll give in and destroy all the good you're trying to do for him in this thing you ask of Me. Can you really say that you're strong enough to ensure that you never do what could hurt him even more than if he died at the hands of Wolfram and Hart? Really? Because, remember, you'll do this knowing that even though you'll eventually see him on some kind of regular basis, I'd imagine. You'll be near him, and all the while, you'll be the only one who knows what truly has been between you. You'll have to live with the fact that he has no memory of you...no memory of what has happened...or what he thinks or feels about the situation...of the things you've shared, you and him, over the many decades you've known him. Can you really shoulder that burden for the rest of his life? More importantly, how will you cope with how things have changed by that point? He'll seek you out, it's true, but how and in what way? And, what type of person will he be by that point? What ties will he have made to other people and places and things of which you'll have nothing to do?"

He saw Brennan's brow furrow at His words as several thoughts flashed in her mind. She felt her heart clench in her chest as she imagined him waking up in another woman's bed, his arm draped over someone else's shoulder, as he murmured softly to her with a smile that she knew he reserved for her alone. She pictured him sitting in a diner across from a shaggy-haired little boy with his same warm chocolate eyes, drinking a milkshake while a laughing blonde woman—the same one he'd woken up telling 'I love you'—stole French fries from his plate with a gleeful chortle. She felt a stabbing feeling in her chest as he looked up at her, blinking the moment their eyes met and then looking past her, his gaze soaring over her shoulder as if she were nothing and no one.

The pain was so much, for a second, her world spun. However, quickly, logic reasserted itself with a cold vengeance. She blinked and shook away the hurtful thoughts and the painful emotions that came with them.

_I've got to stop this. I-I can't do this to myself. If I keep thinking of it like that, then I'll never be strong enough to do what I have to do, _she told herself. _I know...I know in my heart, this is the way it's got to me. It __must__ be this way. This is the only way to save him. He's no chance otherwise._

Nodding in apparent sympathy, He added in a quiet voice, "Really, as to answers for all those questions, who can say what might or might not happen for you and between you two? It's a terrible gamble to take with something that you say is so precious to you...especially when you'll be suffering so much."

Brennan slowly licked her lips and then shrugged, "Even still," she began in response. "If I didn't suffer, You wouldn't make the deal because there would be little in it that would be attractive for You. That's a fact of which I was well aware before I even summoned You here. So, really, if that's the best You can come up with to try to talk me out of this, You're wasting Your breath."

His red eyes narrowed again, then He smiled with a nod and said, "Very well, then. You know, specifically, what my terms are. I've said all I need to say in that context. Now, it is your turn, Mistress Brennan. So, now, let's hear it. What are _your _terms?"

"He's protected from Wolfram and Hart," she said instantly. "He's shielded. People will remember him, but when they start to wonder where he is and what he's doing, their thoughts will be deflected. No one will ever come looking for him. No one will ever seek him out. Anonymity will give him protection. He gets back everything he lost—his life, his son, his job, his happiness...all of it. He finally gets to live the life he's earned. He doesn't have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life. He gets...he finally gets to be free. He gets to be free and to be...happy." She stopped for a moment, considered what she'd said, and then nodded, "That's it."

"My, my, Mistress Brennan," He suddenly said as he gave her a strange look. "How you've changed since first we met so many centuries ago. You used to be so...well, so...driven, so...Machiavellian, really, the way you brokered with not just Me in your striving for power, wealth, and status for yourself. Why, I remember a young woman who would do anything she needed to do to get to where she wanted to go. I know you haven't forgotten. Don't you remember when you used to have no qualms about removing any obstacle, killing anyone who so much as dared offend your cultured sensibilities in the slightest merely because you could." He paused, giving her a disdainful look before he continued. " Now, that cold, ruthless woman I knew so well..." He arched an eyebrow and shook His head in sad amusement. "But my...what have you done with her, my dear? Have you grown soft, these last hundred years, tinkering around in the dirt with the rotten, empty shells of the dearly departed? Surely that hasn't given you empathy...understanding...sympathetic emotions, as such. In a word, dare I say it, a heart?"

Brennan was quiet for a moment and then said, "What do you mean?"

"You're becoming quite sentimental in your old age," He said. "So noble, so self-sacrificing...and all for his freedom and happiness." He chuckled, pausing after a minute and then said, "Such emotions from one such as yourself are almost...well, inspiring."

Unable to help herself, Brennan rolled her eyes again, clearly unimpressed with His observation as she responded, "Somehow, I think you'll make do."

"No," He said, shaking His head with a snort. "In the end...it's true. You've inspired me. So much so that..." He paused and gave her another malevolent smile. "Well, I think I have one additional term I'll be adding to the bargain."

"What?" Brennan asked, her heart speeding up as she felt as if the Sword of Damocles was about to drop down on her head. "What else do you want?"

"I think...yes, as my final condition," He smiled. "I'm going to give you a gift, Mistress Brennan. I'm going to give you a very selfless gift just because you've...inspired me. You're selflessness for him...for the man you love? So, I want to give you a gift."

"What?" Brennan repeated, her voice heavy with caution. "What is it?"

"Twenty-four hours," He told her with a sharp nod. "I think...yes. Definitely. You'll get twenty-four uninterrupted hours with him before he forgets and everything begins anew." Smiling at her again, He added, "Isn't that generous of me?"

"Hardly," Brennan said, her brow furrowed hard as she stared at Him with hate clearly burning in her cool blue eyes as she immediately realized what He was truly doing by granting her such a 'gift.' "You're just doing that so that I'll have to tell him, aren't You? You know...You know I won't be able to see him and not explain what I did if I see him, so in the end, You already know that such a happenstance will only bring me more pain in the end than happiness."

Shrugging his large shoulders, He said, "You wound me, Mistress. Here I was thinking that I was being generous, but if you want to think I do this to hurt you, well then—" He stopped as He leveled a hard stare at her and finished His sentence. "Who am I to stop you from thinking that? In either case, those are my terms. Take it or leave it."

Clenching her fists at her side, Brennan gritted her teeth before she spat, "You know damn well I'll agree."

A burst of flame suddenly appeared in front of her as a parchment in red ink that she knew to be blood waited for her signature.

"Very well then," His voice boomed. "I think, unless there's something I've forgotten, that we're agreed. Now, I believe you know the way this still works," He said as He waited for her to make her choice formally. "Feel free to take all the time you wish to read the fine print—it's all there. No tricks, no gimmicks...it's all written out just as we've agreed."

Slowly, Brennan turned towards the parchment, and after she'd read the terms and found there was no dishonesty present as He'd assured her, she took out her silver dagger, slowly pricked her forefinger on its tip, and then signed her name in blood using her index finger. As soon as she was finished, the glowing velum burned brightly once and then disappeared in another fiery flash of light.

"Good," He told her, again smiling malevolently at her. "Good then. Consider the bargain struck. It's done."

Brennan nodded once, a sad but satisfied smile on her face. Red eyes glowed as she turned around and began to chant the ritual that would close the conduit that had allowed their communication, knowing their business was at an end now that the bargain had been struck.

* * *

**-tbc-**

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**A/N2: **Well, we don't know if anyone had expected that or not. Now, ladies and gents, this is, as they say, the point where things get...well...interesting. *blinks innocently*

As ever, constructive criticism/feedback is appreciated (with an emphasis on constructive). To be honest, we long ago realized this story arc is either a love it or hate it sort of thing. (Crossovers in particular, even more so than even the most AU of AU pieces, are this way.) Most people who hate it have stopped reading, and we think that's the best for all involved. But, if you're still one of the ones out here, grumbling that you don't like such and such because you just don't like it? Well, okay. Fair enough. To each his own, right? But, do us a favor and yourself. No need to let us know. Such comments are chucked in the proverbial fireplace anyway, so...yeah.

To all the rest, who are liking the journey we've taken you on thus far, we thank you in advance and promise that Part II (Angel and Brennan reunite in D.C. after his accident) is forthcoming shortly.

In the meantime, we wouldn't mind hearing what the reaction is to this latest, well, development. For those who are on Twitter, we also suggest you check out the female star of our story WitchyBren. She's quite amusing in her take on Angel, their relationship, and the world at large. If you're on Twitter, and like our Angel(us)/Brennan arch, she's definitely got the inside track on things, so don't forget to follow her. That said, until Part II posts, thanks!


	2. Part II: Explaining the Terms

**The Price to Be Paid**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: , then—moving on...

**Summary: **See previous chapter.

**Logistical Notes: **See previous chapter.

**A/N: **We don't have a lot to say on this one, except...well, here it is. Short, sweet, and to the point...ironically, unlike the rest of our writing, we know. Now, on with the show!

**UNF Alert**:To those whom we owed an IOU for Part I, consider this our first payment...with an emphasis on first, and by no means our last for this story. ::laughs evilly::

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**Part II: Explaining the Terms**

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Angel blinked his eyes open, wincing slightly as the yellowish early afternoon light shone through the window directly into his face. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the painfully bright light, then, after a moment, his eyes adjusted, and he glanced around and tried to figure out where he was.

The first thing he realized was that he was seated in a very comfortable chair, a buttery-soft leather easy chair with wide, plush arms that seemed to swallow him up and hold him snugly in its embrace. It seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't place where he knew the chair from. The second thing he realized was that he was exhausted and his entire body ached as if he'd been run over by a truck—which, as a matter of fact, had happened to him once so he felt with some accuracy that the euphemism aptly described his current situation—and his temples pounded with a headache the likes of which he hadn't endured in decades. The third thing that he noticed as he slowly inventoried the room around him was that a very familiar pair of bright, glittering blue eyes was watching him. The fourth and last thing he discerned were the two unforgettable smells that filled his nostrils: the fragrant aroma of fresh-steeped Irish Breakfast tea, and the fainter yet infinitely sweeter smell of his longtime, erstwhile lover, Temperance Brennan.

"Wha—?" he grunted, his voice low and gravelly from slumber. "Bren?" he blinked at her, not quite certain he should believe what he was seeing. "What the hell? I mean, is it really you? Where am I?"

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, noting how his arms ached as he raised them. Every sinew of his body felt tight and sore, and any attempt to shift his position or move seemed frustrated by the leaden weight of his limbs. He blinked a few times and shook his head, then looked down and stared at his lap.

He narrowed his eyes, then blinked again as he glanced down and saw a pair of fading greenish-purple bruises, one in the middle of his forearm and the other in the inside of his elbow, puzzling for a moment as he suddenly remembered how he'd gotten them. He thought back to the early hours of the morning a couple of days before when he'd plucked the blood-oxygen sensor off his finger, yanked the IVs out of his arms (crudely enough to leave bruises behind), quickly thrown on the street clothes Spike had smuggled in for him—grumbling about the choice of shoes his grandchilde had stuffed into the duffel bag—and walked right past the nurse's station with a scowl on his face and not a single backwards glance.

He'd gone home, back to his room at the hotel, and slept for the rest of the day. When he'd awakened, he'd been annoyed to realize he'd slept for thirty-six hours straight, skipping an entire evening. As soon as he realized how much time had passed, he got up and insisted on joining Spike on a patrol to check out a report of demon activity at the Hyperion Water Treatment Plant adjacent to LAX. Angel frowned as he recalled how wrecked he felt after just a few hours trolling around the 112-year old sewage plant looking for what proved to be a non-existent nest of Carnyss demons. Returning home exhausted, he'd crashed again, sleeping for another fourteen hours straight. He'd woken up and, using a combination of charming ball busting and a pouty-lipped guilt trip, he eventually convinced Spike to let him join him on another patrol the following night provided he went back to sleep after eating lunch. He remembered going back to crash on his bed and falling asleep in his room. .

After that, everything got...hazy.

"What's...wait..." He shook his head and raised his eyebrows, his forehead crinkling in confusion. "This is...what's going on, Bren?" He thought about the nonplussed expression the face of the head Neuro-ICU nurse as he walked out of the hospital, and he wondered if he'd made a mistake in skipping out like that from the hospital after all.

"Is this some kind of dream? What's happening?" He reached up and rubbed his eyes and shook his head. "Oh yeah," he murmured. "I must be dreaming. The way you're lookin' at me like that." He paused and licked his lips, then smiled as an image flashed before his eyes. "Yeah. This is definitely one of those wickedly good dreams I have about you sometimes when we're apart." He fell silent for a moment, but then confessed, "Who am I kidding? I have those dreams a lot when...you know, when we're not together." A shiver of desire flashed up his spine as a particular dream image came to mind. "You know, the kind where you're giving me one of those fuckhither looks and smiling that crooked grin you have when you're gettin' all horned up, and all I can think is how I want to kiss that ever-lovin' grin off your face 'cause it's been so long since I've seen you and..." His voice trailed off briefly. "Except, if this is a dream, why are you standing so far away? And, well, not to be greedy, but you're wearing way too many clothes. Most of the time, all you'll be wearing is that great navy blue bra and panty set you got last year—the one with all the lace and mesh that doesn't leave a thing to the imagination. Mmmm." With a soft grunt, he looked down at the dark reddish-brown leather chair and then up again to met her eyes. "I always loved this chair, you know. It's so sumptuous and decadent, and I knew the minute I saw it in Señor what's-his-name's shop down in Mérida, all I could think about was making love to you in this chair—the way the leather would look next to your creamy white skin, your red hair and those blue eyes of yours." Angel waggled his eyebrows suggestively then frowned and sighed, "We've never done that, though. But if I'm dreaming, and this is my dream, then come 'ere. I want to do that right now."

A faint smile flashed across Brennan's face as she shook her head gently at his amusing ramble. "No, Angel," she said. "You're not dreaming. And, while I'm not particularly against the idea of having sex with you in that chair, I'm afraid it's going to have to wait for a minute. We need to talk. Angel, you're...you're in D.C."

He ran his hand through his hair and groaned. "How—wait, what?" He shook his head, flustered as he squinted at the afternoon light. "I don't—what's going on?"

"You're not in L.A. anymore, Angel," she said, raising her cup of tea to her lips, her nostrils flaring as the warm steam rose off the beverage and tickled her nose as she took a cautious sip. "You're in my apartment...in D.C."

He groaned and sat up a little straighter in the chair, struggling a bit to reseat himself as the chair's comfort seemed to resist his attempts to move. "I don't understand," he said, still deeply confused as he tried to shake off the cobwebs that seemed quite stubbornly to cling to his mind and blur his senses. "What?" he croaked.

He blinked at her again, then squeezed his eyes shut. _I'm hallucinating, _he thought. _I mean, I know what she said. But this can't be real. It just can't be. It doesn't make any sense. So maybe this is one of those weird type of dreams within a dream? Maybe not a sex dream like she said, but still a dream of some sort. Because I wanna dream about her. I miss her so damn much. Bren...I want you. Where are you? _He opened his eyes again and stared into the afternoon sun, which blinded him with a bright yellow light that made his head throb, but for some reason, he couldn't find it in him to turn away. Angel reached up and scratched his head.

He remembered having some kind of similar dream-within-a-dream while he was in the opiate-induced coma the doctors had sedated him into to let his injured brain rest so that the intracranial swelling would go down. He'd dreamt that he and Brennan were married and that he'd woken up in bed next to her, roused from sleep by a loud rapping on their apartment door, and after a grumbly argument about who was going to answer the door— '_You get it...' 'No, you get it...' _and her slapping his naked ass out of bed and a final _'Fine. I get it...' _before he rolled out of bed to the sound of her throaty laughter (the one he'd always loved so much) goading him on as he tried to dress—and rummaging around for a robe to cover his naked self, he opened the door, only to find no one was there. As he'd emerged from the dense fog of his coma, he was disoriented and confused, and the vivid dreams he'd had while under heavy sedation, most of them about him and Brennan living a semblance of a normal life, compounded his confusion.

_I left too soon, _he frowned. _Fuck. As much as I hate to admit it, maybe I shouldn't have left like I did. Maybe I should've stayed. Maybe my brain is still fucked up, and_—

"Angel," Brennan said quietly and evenly, trying to tug him out of his own tangled web of thoughts, something she'd done a thousand times before over the years when she saw her lover in a brooding silence, bogged down in a mental quagmire of his own making.

Rubbing his eyes again, he groaned and said, "I-I was...what's happened to...I have to get back to L.A...Spike and I are supposed to go check out this place down off La Brea Avenue where there's...ummm...s'posedly this...uhhh..." His voice trailed off as he struggled to piece together how it could be that he had gone from the Neuro-ICU at L.A.'s Good Samaritan Hospital three days prior to sitting in Brennan's D.C. apartment without having any memory of the five-hour flight from LAX to Washington. "There are people there that are counting on me to—"

Brennan's smile shifted into a frown at hearing his words. Shanshu Prophecy or no, after she'd found Angel half-frozen and starving on the streets of Chicago and given a third of her soul to him, he'd found himself, eventually finding his purpose in being a selfless champion of light, protecting the helpless against the overwhelming forces of darkness and suffering on behalf of the Powers that Be. But, this selflessness of his terrified her, especially after his fulfillment of the prophecy gave him his humanity back. His fulfillment of the prophecy, and the way he kept striving and fighting in the same ways after re-attaining his mortality, made it clear in Brennan's mind that his selflessness, his warrior spirit, had nothing to do with the prophecy at all, but was rather fundamentally a part of what made Angel whom he was. She admired him for it, yet it chilled her to the bone because she knew it could and would very well one day be his undoing.

"Please don't worry about that now," she said, her voice gentle as she silently pleaded that he not force her hand before she was ready to tell him what he needed to know. "You've been through so much recently, Angel. For now, please. Just slow down. Relax and—"

"Bren," he interrupted her with a wince. "As much as I want to, I can't. I just can't. I have to...well, fuck. I need...as soon as I can figure out someway to actually get up off my ass, as much as I want to, I can't stay here. I've got to go back—"

"No," she suddenly said, her voice sharp as she looked at him and shook her head furiously. "No."

"What do you mean _no_?" he asked, his growing confusion clear as he looked at her with his brow furrowed and his eyes wide. "I don't understand."

"You're not going back to Los Angeles, Angel," she said evenly as she stood up from the couch where she'd been sitting. "You look exhausted," she said, wanting to lean over and touch him, but afraid that once she started, she wouldn't be able to stop, so she resisted. Fumbling for something to latch onto that could keep her busy and from giving into her impulse, her eyes landed on the now cool cup of tea which she'd been drinking before he'd woken up. "Why don't you let me make you some tea?" Instead of reaching out for him as she so desperately wanted to do, she leaned over to grab the cup of tea. Once her fingers wrapped around the royal blue stoneware handle, she raised her mug demonstratively. "It's Irish Breakfast—your favorite," she told him.

"Okay, right," Angel said, his eyes narrowed as a grin at last cracked his face. "You know, at first I wasn't sure."

"About what?" she asked with a tilt of her head.

He smiled at her and then answered, "At first, I wasn't certain if I was awake or asleep. But now I know that I'm definitely dreaming," he said.

"You're not dreaming, Angel," she insisted. "I promise."

"So, wait," he snickered. "You're actually telling me that, after a hundred fifty years, you're finally drinking Irish tea? After all these years, busting my balls about Irish tea and how it never holds a candle to the bergamot-infusion in Earl Gray, and now you drink Irish tea? Really?"

Brennan rolled her eyes with a curt laugh. "I've been drinking Irish tea for decades, Angel," she said. After a moment of thought, she realized it didn't really matter if she finally came clean on the subject they'd been teasing one another about for nearly a century and a half, since he would have no memory of it after the sun rose on a new day. _If it would make him happy_—_even in the slightest_—_on this last day we have together, then I should just tell him. _With a shrug, she clarified, "Many, many decades, actually. I started drinking it around the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. I just never drank it in front of you. You know—just to keep you on edge." She arched an eyebrow and raised her mug again. "If you give me a minute, I'll make you a cup. Just sit back, and although I know it's easier said than done, please—try to relax. I know it's been a rough morning for you."

He covered his eyes with his hands and sighed as she walked into the kitchen and put a fresh kettle full of water back on the stove-top burner. He was silent for a moment and did try to do as she'd asked of him. However, eventually, he was unable to help himself as he called out, "Bren? What's going on? Why am I here?" He pursed his lips and sighed again. "Not that I—not that I don't love seeing you, you know, because it's been so long, it seems, since the last time I did. But I—"

Suddenly the last banks of fog in Angel's brain seemed to lift as it dawned on him the last time he'd seen her. It had two and a half months since last she'd come to L.A. to spend a long weekend with him. He suddenly felt light-headed when he remembered that he'd been due to make the cross-country jaunt to see her just before he'd his accident. He felt his stomach clench as he thought of their last phone call before he fell, and how happy she'd sounded about the prospect of them being together in D.C. The 4th of July fell on a Sunday that year, and she had managed a four-day weekend out of it. They were going to go to the National Mall and watch the fireworks together, then go back to her place to, in his words, _'make some fireworks of our own.' _He held the inside of his lip between his teeth as he wondered what it must have been like for her, not hearing from him and not knowing why he hadn't shown up on Friday morning as planned.

He frowned. "Oh, fuck, Bren. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I missed our last time," he said vaguely. Swallowing hard, Angel knew he had to tell her the truth. "Like I told you when I called you after I got out of the hospital, I got pretty fucked up this time. Worse than the usual." He hesitated as he watched her reaction. He winced a little as he awaited some response from her, but still she held her tongue. "The Senior Partners sent a nasty bunch out and, well, not to dwell too much on the gory details, but there were some vamps and then this Ry'Car'm demon—he was a real piece of work, and tossed me and Gunn around pretty good." He saw something flicker behind Brennan's eyes but was surprised that she hadn't interrupted him yet. "The thing threw me out a damn window, and I landed on my noggin." "You've always said I had a thick skull, Bren," he said with a forced laugh. "Guess that's what saved my ass this time, huh? That hard head of mine. It...umm, well, it sorta cracked my skull, though. They said it was a 'comminuted fracture of the cranium'—whatever the fuck that is. I was in the hospital for a while...several days, I guess. That's why I...it's why I didn't come when we had planned. I was drugged up three ways to Sunday, and my head all wrapped up in gauze like one of those Egyptian mummies you like to play with, and—"

"I don't work very much with mummies much these days," she said, strangely ignoring the more pertinent details he'd just shared with her. "I'm actually spending more of my time with articulated and/or disarticulated skeletons that have been macerated. I've become...that is, I'm considered somewhat of an expert on bone trauma."

Angel quirked an eyebrow at her use of the term 'macerated' which held no meaning for him, then nodded. "But, Bren," he said. "I'm okay, alright? I've gotten my brains rattled around plenty over the years and did alright through it all. I'm a hundred and ten percent now, okay?"

"If that's an accurate statement," she responded haltingly. "Then, I'm quite...relieved."

"I'm fine," he said with a smile, trying to elicit the same from her. "Hey, look—I'm sorry we missed our weekend. And I'm sorry if you worried about me." A smile spread across his face as a thought occurred to him. "I guess you missed me enough not to wait for next month to see me, huh?"

"I was...concerned," she admitted with a small nod. "When we missed July 4th." She paused and then said, a bit of wistfulness creeping into her voice, "This was the first time since last Halloween that we've gone more than six weeks without seeing each other."

"I know," he said. "And I missed you like crazy, you know that? So I guess, all things considered, you did me a real favor. You know I hate flying commercial just as much as you do. So, anyway, by zinging me across the country using your special magic courier service, I guess you saved both of us the trouble of enduring the red-eye." He waggled his eyebrows. "I know, I know. You usually don't take commercial flights, but still..."

"Not if I don't have to," Brennan said evenly. "That is, while it's a necessary evil that must, on occasion, be endured, I know you must remember that I hate flying commercial. When I do it, I feel like a heifer crowded into a pen waiting to be shooed into the abattoir. I can't stand it."

"I know," he nodded. Then tilting his head, a thought occurred to him. "Hey, Bren?"

"Yes, Angel?" she answered.

"I know you must've missed me...but that wasn't the whole reason you did this, right?" he asked. "I mean...how did I get here? Why? And...how?"

She hesitated for a brief minute. "I _did _have something to do with bringing you here," she answered. "But, I-I...I didn't...I didn't use my powers to accomplish that goal. The cost of what a transcontinental teleportation spell would have rendered me...well, let's just say they're no easy thing. In fact, they're one of the more exhausting pieces of magic that I know how to work. There's a great expense involved in using that type of magic. So, I mean, yes, I _can _do that sort of thing, but it's not...it's not something I'd undertake lightly. Transportation spells of any kind aren't...well, the amount of energy they require, they're not something to attempt without being fully aware of the high price they extract in return for achieving that bit of conjuring. If I'd done that, I wouldn't be able to stand up straight for several hours, let alone make you tea."

Angel narrowed his eyes briefly, still puzzled as to how he'd gotten there, but dismissed the thought with a sigh. "This is just so weird. I mean, of course I'm fired up to see you, especially after missing our last get-together." He watched her open one of the cabinets and reach up to the top shelf to retrieve the particular mug she was looking for, and he grinned as he saw the bottom hem of her snug-fitting camisole ride up, exposing the smooth, ivory skin of her lower back. He felt a tingling in his fingertips and a tugging sensation in his gut at the sight of her bare skin. He stood up from the easy chair with a soft grunt, finally feeling stronger than he had just a few moments earlier, and continuing to feel better with each moment that he passed in her presence. He then walked over into her kitchen where she stood waiting for the kettle to be ready. "I missed you like crazy," he said in a low, velvety voice as he sidled up behind her, pressing her against the kitchen counter. He leaned over her shoulder and laid a feather-light kiss on the right side of her neck. He let his lips linger there, smiling against her skin as he took a deep whiff of her fragrance. "I missed you so much, Bren." He turned her around and cocked his head to the side as he looked into her light blue eyes. Pursing his lips, he said, "So much. Every time we see each other, it makes the time we spend apart that much harder. I think about you all the time, Bren."

Then he leaned in and kissed her, brushing his lips against hers and catching her lower lip between his as a low hum sounded from his throat. She murmured unintelligibly back, then parted her lips with a quiet sigh. Angel pulled away slightly, then kissed her again, covering her mouth with his and letting his tongue slide between her parted lips. His heart began to race as he felt her tongue glance against his and savored the sweet taste of her mouth. He brought his hands up and cupped her jaw between his hands, pulling her even more deeply into his kiss. Brennan kissed him back, seeking his mouth even more greedily than he'd sought hers, and she opened her mouth wide, chasing his tongue with hers and moaning into their kiss. She felt him pull away slightly but drew him in again, sucking his tongue as he tried to withdraw it, her lips grasping hungrily for his. Finally, the enthusiasm of his efforts caught up with him, and he pulled away, gasping a bit for breath as he caressed her cheek.

"God, Bren," he whispered as he saw how her pale eyes had darkened with want, her pupils pulsing as he held her gaze, and he wondered briefly if she saw the same thing in his. "I missed you," he said quietly, letting his hands fall away from her face, first one and then the other, the latter sliding down her cheek slowly as he brushed his thumb over her bee-stung lips and, a moment later, across her chin. "So much. So very, _very _much."

She stood there for a moment, staring back at him as her breaths rose and fell hard in the wake of their kiss. Then, her eyes narrowed as she heard the water in the kettle start to boil, and she turned her head to look if she could see steam rising from the tiny hole on the spout. When she confirmed that the water had started to boil, she seized the opportunity to move away from Angel just a little bit so she could catch her breath.

Angel sighed and choked back a laugh as he watched her pull away, smiling as he saw how breathless she'd become in the wake of their passionate kiss. "Pretty good, huh?" he chuckled.

Her eyes darted to his and she nodded. "Not too bad."

Grinning at her, he said, "If you need a minute, feel free to take a breather since I know I'm quite the irresistible stud the way I make your heart go pitter patter while you go all breathless like that, Bren."

Shooting him a look, she shook her head with a sigh. "Always the ego with you," she muttered, a small tug at the corner of her mouth indicating that she wasn't really cross at him. "I guess some things never change."

Smirking, Angel watched her putter around with the tea kettle. After a minute, he felt the need to speak, some of the flirtatiousness of their prior exchange dissipating. "You know, it's just weird," he said again as he leaned back against the counter. He raked his hand through his hair, which was already more than a bit messy, and he could tell by the slightly greasy feel of it that he'd forgotten to shower that morning. "See...one minute, I was pulling the covers over my head, trying to get a couple more hours of shuteye after a miserable night dodging the latest crew of goons sent by the Senior Partners, you know, and—"

The kettle whistled sharply from where it sat on the stove, cutting Angel off mid-sentence. Brennan gave him a small look of apology for the interruption even as she turned to pick up the shrieking kettle, silencing it as she flipped open the spout and poured him a generous mugful of hot water over his two bags of Irish Breakfast tea—knowing as she did that Angel liked his tea extra strong. _'Strong and hot—just like I like my women,' _he'd once quipped as he'd accepted a cup from her after spending a long, sweaty afternoon in her bed in London.

"Here." She handed him the steaming mug, and they walked back into the living room where took their seats again, he in the easy chair and she on the edge of the couch a few feet away from him. "You don't need to soften the metaphorical blow here, Angel," she said. She took a deep breath as she watched the steam rise from his mug of tea. "As I mentioned...I have more than a minute amount of medical knowledge when it comes to skeletal trauma. I-I...I know how severe your injuries were. You suffered a comminuted fracture of the parietal bone, which resulted in a subdural hematoma and resultant intracranial swelling that put pressure on your brain tissue. They performed a decompressive craniectomy, Angel. They removed part of your skull to give your swelling brain relief and protect you from further injury. They sedated you, more or less plunging you into a drug-induced coma, so your brain could rest completely while it healed. You'd still need to go back and get a cranioplasty to replace the missing chunk of cranial tissue in the back of your skull. You suffered an injury that kills thousands of people in this country every year. Even those who survive such injuries usually emerge with permanent impairments."

"Wait—what?" he blinked at her, his eyes glazing over a bit as she lobbed a slew of medical mumbo jumbo that had been hurting his head when his doctors had done the same thing in the hospital for the last week between when he'd regained consciousness and when he'd finally left. "How do you even know any of that?"

Biting her bottom lip, she hesitated for a moment before she answered vaguely, "Let's just say I have my sources."

Angel's eyebrows furrowed as he growled quietly and ran through a mental checklist of who might have slipped her the information. _Gunn doesn't really know Bren, never mind how to reach her, _he thought. _Ilyria knows of her because she has Fred's memories and is capable of reaching her, I guess, but...she probably wouldn't see a reason to reach out like that. _He sighed. _Connor doesn't know about Bren, _he noted with a silent shrug. _Spike, _he thought with a nod. _It had to be Spike. He knows her. He likes her. They've kept in touch over the years. It had to be Spike. Fucker._

"Spike," Angel grumbled as he lifted his eyes to meet hers. "Spike sent you my records, didn't he?"

Brennan took a deep breath and shook her head. "Yes," she nodded at him. His jaw tensed at her response, and when she realized what she'd said, she quickly amended, "That is, wait. No, he didn't send them to me." She paused for a beat before she confessed, her tone grave, "Spike didn't have to send me your records because it wasn't necessary once I saw your records in person, at Good Samaritan."

Angel's eyes widened in surprise. He remembered vaguely the day he'd woken up, and the day after that. The details were hazy, and the memories indistinct, but he remembered seeing her face, and hearing her voice. He remembered asking for her. Yet he also remembered feeling disappointment, sadness and surprise when he realized that she'd never come for him. He stared into his steaming mug and blinked a couple of times as he struggled to tease out the memories of what slivers he remembered from his comatose dream from those memories he had from the first hours and days after he emerged from the dense fog of heavy sedation. "You came out to L.A. to see me in the hospital?" he asked. "How did you—?"

"Yes," she nodded quietly.

"It was Spike, wasn't it?" Angel asked. "Who told you..." Slowly, Brennan nodded. Sighing, Angel looked away as he said quietly, "He shouldn't have done that. It wasn't his place. I-I...I didn't...I wouldn't have wanted you to worry about me."

"It wasn't his place?" she asked, her voice edged with frustration. "First, William and I have known one another for a long time. Not quite as long as you and I have known one another, but for a very, very long time. And he knows about us, and that I care for you. So when he realized the gravity of your injuries, he called me."

"Still," he insisted. "It's just—if I'd have wanted him to..." He clenched his jaw, his nostrils flaring as he shook his head. "He overstepped his bounds. He knows what the—that he wasn't supposed to get involved in...in what's between us. We had an understanding, him and me..."

_Angelus stood nose to nose with his grandchilde, his nostrils flaring as they filled with the smell of her, a smell that clung to William, swirled with the scent of the nervous young vampire's sweat._

"_You made a big fuckin' mistake, boy," Angelus growled as he glared down at the shorter, slighter man from beneath heavy brows twisted with demonic rage. _

"_Did I now?" William replied, his straight white teeth flashing back in a sneer. "Tell me, my Fenian friend. Yeah?"_

"_She's mine," Angelus grunted, "and you knew it. I'd ha' thought that a lettered lad like you'd ha' figured it out after spending more 'n' a fortnight walkin' around town like some sort of trick unicorn 'cause you got caught flappin' your lips about her the last time**, **but still you went out trollin', hopin' to get under her skirts, aye? I know you did because you haven't had that cock off your forehead for more than a week or two. Now listen, you little pissant. She's mine, aye? Mine and mine alone. You donna get to touch her, got it? You stay away from her."_

_William laughed, gleeful that he was eliciting such a response from the elder vampire. "Bollocks, Angelus. I thought we could take what we wanted, who we wanted," he said sardonically. "No possession, no ownership. Remember? That's what you told me when I saw you shagging Dru senseless. Right? Isn't that how it is? Or do the rules not apply to you, Angelus? Is it just do as I say and not as I do?"_

_Angelus reached out and grabbed a fistful of William's shirt as he opened his mouth with a metallic snarl. "When it comes to you and me, boy," he said. "These are the rules. Mistress Brennan is mine. You touch her again, mmm? I'll fuckin' kill you. I made the one who made you. I can unmake you just like that." He punctuated his point with a sharp snap of his fingers using his free hand. "Now, if you're as smart as you claim to be, Wee Willie, I suggest you listen good." He hauled the poet-turned-vampire to tips of his feet until their eyes met one another, pure hatred staring back at each man. "You touch her again, huh, and you can take that to the fuckin' bank, William. I'll end you. Don't touch her. Don't visit her. Don't e'en think about her. Stay away from her. Stay outta my affairs. Go near her again, and you'll be dust before the next dawn. There won't be any other warnin's, lad, so do we understand each other or not? She's mine."_

He blinked away the memory as he turned back to Brennan and continued, "Now, I know it was a long time ago, but I warned him not to mess with you."

She paused, looking away from him as her voice became small once again as she asked, "Would you have preferred it if it had gone the other way, Angel? Would you...would you have been content to have me only find out what had transpired until after I'd found out that you'd died? Or that you had suffered a permanent trauma and were going to be left in some sort of persistent vegetative state? Or suffered damage to your parietal lobe so you couldn't any longer control your own functions?"

"So, wait," he said. "If something happened to you, how would I know, huh? Or would I just find out reading the obits in the _Post?_" He looked away with a frown. "The people you work with," he said, bringing his eyes back to meet hers. "You've never told any of them about me. Would that little twerp, Zack-the-Brainboy, know to call? Or that girlfriend of yours—she seems pretty cool, but I bet you've never told her about me. The only person in your life back there..." He rolled his eyes as he realized his slip. "Back _here_, right? The only one who knows about me is your dad, huh? You hardly even talk to him these days, and I know he sure as hell doesn't like me. He'd be the last goddamn person on earth to pick up the goddamn phone to let me know something was wrong."

Sighing, Brennan responded, "Look, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The thing with you and my dad is between the two of you. I feel the same way about it now as I did in 1882. I'm not getting into the middle of _that _pissing contest."

"Your father," Angel grumbled. "I mean, shit. I can see why your da' wouldn't be keen on you twistin' the sheets with Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, but after a hundred fifty years and me getting a soul and all, you'd think the man'd get over being pissed about you hooking up with a vampire." He shook his head with a grunt. "Maybe it's the Irish thing," he mused. "While he's still sore at the idea of any man havin' his way with you, he's willing to admit that his five-hundred year old daughter is a grown woman with a sex life, but the idea of you fucking a Fenian like me is just a bridge too fuckin' far, huh?"

She looked at him for a minute, and then shook her head. "Look, this isn't about my dad or even Spike, Angel. This is about you and me. Spike knew I would want to know. He did the right thing. Fact is, I'm grateful that he _did _call me."

Several long moments of silence passed between them before Angel finally broke it.

"You're worried," he observed with a small nod of his head in her general direction. When he waited for her response, and it came in the form of an almost imperceptible nod, Angel felt an overwhelming need to reach out to comfort her. Taking a step towards her, he reached out a hand to touch her arm as he said, "Look, I know you're scared. And I'm so sorry you had to go through all that. I wanted to spare you all that. That's why...well, to be honest, that's why I wanted things like I thought they were between us on that front. I didn't want you to worry about me." He paused for a beat, sighing again, as he realized what was done was done. Instead, refocusing his efforts on reassuring and comforting her, Angel replied confidently, "You know what? That doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is that it's okay, Bren. I'm gonna be fine. I mean, I _am _fine. I'm alright. Even now, I heal quickly. I'm strong. Everything's right as rain. You don't need to worry about me."

Brennan's eyebrows furrowed deeply at hearing his words. "I worry about you all the time, Angel," she said. "The thought of you laying there in that hospital bed—sedated and with a Saltine-cracker sized piece of your skull removed so your brain wouldn't crush itself because of the injuries that you'd sustained, which said piece of your skull still hasn't been put back since you left the hospital against medical advice. Well...that image? It's haunted me, Angel. It's kept me awake every night since I received Spike's phone call and went to that damn hospital. And, you know what? I just can't take it, Angel. I just can't take it anymore."

"Bren," he said, leaning forward in his chair as he held the mug of tea between his hands. "Listen—"

"No, Angel," she said firmly, choking his name as she locked her gaze on his warm, brown eyes and high cheekbones. "You listen. I had to get you out of there. They were going to suck you back into that hell that they'd plunged L.A. into and destroy you—destroy what you are now, after all these years—either by taking away your humanity or by..." Her words suddenly trailed off as she felt the threatening tears sear her sinuses. "Or...by finally killing you."

"Bren," he said, his voice moist with feeling as he stood up with a soft grunt, set his mug down on the coffee table, and walked over to take his seat next to her on the couch. "I'm fine. I promise. I just need to—" He hesitated for a few seconds and then knew it would only be worse for her given her current insecure mindset if he wasn't completely honest. But then Brennan's words processed in his mind: _I had to get you out of there_.

_What's happening to me? _he thought. _She's talking as if I'm not going back, like ever. So, yeah, I must've heard her wrong. _He looked up and sighed. _This doesn't make any sense. We've got a plan here. We talked about this—how we're gonna make this two cities/one life thing work for us. So what in the hell is she talking about?_

Swallowing once, he admitted to her, "Okay, maybe I'm still a bit slow on the uptake because I got my head cracked, but I don't know what you mean. Are you telling me...what?" He tilted his head as he looked at her, struggling to understand. "Did you bring me here...to save me or something?" he asked, placing his hand on her knee as he looked into her eyes, which glistened with the emotion he'd heard in her voice just a minute earlier. Brennan opened her mouth to speak, but again no sound came out. Trying to help her, Angel prompted, "Was something happening? Was something going to happen to me in L.A.? Did you...hell, I don't know. Did you find out about a plot against me or something?"

Her glistening blue eyes held his for a minute and then she blinked before a couple of times before she sucked down some more air. At last, Brennan found her voice again as she answered with a sober nod, "Yes."

"Okay," he told her, feeling that he could work with Brennan as long as she willing to talk to him. "Right. So there was something getting ready to happen?"

Brennan chewed her bottom lip, and then, once she decided that—from a certain perspective—what he'd just asked her wasn't an entirely inaccurate summary of the current situation they faced. After a moment, she managed to respond, "Yes."

Nodding at her, he replied, "Right. So...I'm not sure why or how...but did you find out about...what? An ambush or something like that, I guess? Something that was going down?"

For a split second, he thought about the rumored nest of Carnyss demons, the clan that he and Spike had gone out to the Hyperion Plant to find, only to discover that there was no nest there, just a big, reeking wastewater treatment plant run by the L.A. Department of Public Works. He wondered if the alleged demon nest had been another decoy, planted by the Senior Partners to lure him in a trap they'd laid for him, even as he struggled to set aside how logically Brennan could've come to know of such of a thing when he himself hadn't gotten the vaguest clue.

For her part, Brennan considered his latest question and then answered vaguely. "You were...in danger," she said softly.

"Right," he murmured. "I got that part. And you found out about it somehow and...what?" He looked at her with solicitous eyes. When she remained tight-lipped, he pleaded with her. "I'm still a bit confused, Bren. So, please—help me out here."

She looked at him for a minute, her resolve crumbling as his warm brown eyes widened at her in askance, and then she told him, "I did what I had to do to get you away. To get you to safety. I had to...I-I had to save you."

Angel continued to look at her, still not certain what to make of what she was telling him. Several moments of silence passed between them as he absorbed the full gravity of her words. Eventually, he opened his mouth, but for a minute didn't say anything. Leaning his head back, her words echoed in his mind. _I had to save you, _she'd said. _I had to save you. _He'd never heard her say anything like that, not in all the years he'd known her. The words made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. _I had to save you. _He knew she cared for him, just as he cared for her. Yet still, her words cut strangely through the air between them, boring into him in a way he'd never felt before. He thought of the countless times they'd been together, and all the places they'd been together. He thought of where it all began, at the boxing match in Covent Garden and the wild days and nights he'd spent in her home in Cheapside afterward. _I did what I had to do. _The woman he'd met that night in Covent Garden might have said such a thing, but only in regards to something that would have been to her benefit. _She's not that woman anymore_, he thought. _Just as I'm not the man I was back then. _She'd changed, as had he, and what they were together had changed.

_I don't understand, _he thought. _Why is she acting like this? Why's she being so strange about it? This isn't the first time I've been hurt. _Angel remembered all the nights he'd come in just before morning twilight, bruised and battered after a melee with a gang of demons, and how he'd be good to go by the time he rolled out of bed at sundown that night. _I mean, it wasn't quite this bad before, but it's sure not the only time I've almost gotten waxed fighting off some kind of nasty. I've got this. It's not a problem. I've done worse than this before and lived to fight another day. She shouldn't be so worked up over this. It's fine. I know I can handle it._

He looked into her eyes and pressed his lips together as he felt her fear. Before he'd gotten his humanity back, he'd have been able to smell it hanging in the air around her, a citrusy scent like lemon oil. The thought of smelling her fear made him scrunch his nose reflexively as if he were still able to sniff for and actually find it. Like everything about her, he imagined her fear would smell a little sweeter than most, but he wasn't sure, because he'd never actually smelled _her _fear. Glancing towards the window, the shades reminded him of the Roman shades that hung over the window of their sleeper car on the train they took from Vancouver to Chicago in the late 1920s.

_The train stopped one night near Banff, discharging a number of passengers who had reservations at the Banff Springs Hotel and picking up a few more, including two American men. That night, the men barged into the sleeper car armed with curved daggers and fell upon Brennan. Angel flew into an instant rage, his eyes narrowed by his thickened brow as he watched her throw the two men off of her with a flash of blue electricity that sent them reeling into the dark paneled walls of the car. The men shook off their stunned looks and their eyes glowed red with demonic anger as they set upon her again. Brennan opened her hand and uttered an unintelligible incantation as the daggers in the demons' hands glowed red-hot. Dropping their weapons with surprise, the demons snarled and rushed at her again with clawed hands, but their growls were swiftly silenced as Angel grabbed them from behind by their evening coats, dashed the nearest one head-first against the wall before he snapped the second one's neck with his bare hands. Taking a moment to admire his own handiwork, he then brought his attention back to the first one and twisted his neck with a loud _crack _before spitting on both of the broken bodies. Flashing his eyebrows and shooting her a cocky grin, he proceeded to their limp bodies off the train and watched them tumble clumsily down the dark ravine and fall into the Bow River with a faint splash._ _When he came back into the car, Brennan shrugged and beckoned him with a crooked finger to join her in bed, which was an invitation he quickly accepted._

Angel blinked away the memory. Even when they'd occasionally faced danger together, as they had on that overnight train between Banff and Calgary, he'd never seen or smelled or otherwise felt her fear. But he didn't need his vampire senses to know she was gravely concerned as she sat next to him on her sofa in the bright light of the D.C. afternoon. He could see it in her pale, glistening eyes and feel it radiating off of her, and it made his stomach clench as he felt her anxiety much as if it were his own. He swallowed, then mouthed her name as he struggled to understand. While he felt puzzled and somewhat annoyed, he wasn't angry, because in the background of his mind, amid the simmering frustration he felt, he felt her soul, humming deep inside of him. Still, his mind kept coming back to the night everything between them changed forever—to the place where they'd began to merge their separate lives into one. He remembered the night that they ceased being mere acquaintances and lovers and the thing between them coalesced into something stronger, deeper, and more permanent.

"You saved me once before," he told her quietly, glancing down as she brought her own, smaller hand to rest on top of his. "And I've saved you. In the end it's always worked out someway, Bren. You know that."

"No," she said quietly. "That is...we can't always count on it working out, Angel. Not now...not when things are so fleeting...so precious in their fragility. I-I just...we can't take that chance. I mean, I know that I've tried to be there for you when things went badly for you, but it's not—"

Angel took a deep breath and stared into the dark well of his steeping tea. "When you found me, Bren," he said, interrupting her as he lifted his face again to gaze into Brennan's cool blue eyes. "You know? I can't help but thinking about it. That night...in Chicago...when you found me, I was a mess, you know that. I know you know that, but—"

"You were in such a bad place," she said. "Horribly undernourished, dirty, and unkempt, but more than anything...you were so lost and all alone. You were...when I finally found you and saw you, it hurt me to see you like that. You were so very thin—scrawny, to be perfectly honest. And sad. So...well, just so very, very sad."

He swallowed as he thought of that night she'd found him, and the nine thousand days he'd spent in despair before she'd discovered him. "You have no idea," he said grimly. "When the Gypsies cursed me, Bren, it was as if the skies suddenly opened up above me, unloading on me a deluge of guilt for all the things I'd done those last hundred forty-five years, and I felt myself drowning in it. Every night, I woke to walk the streets and feed, and in every face I looked into, I saw a thousand other faces of people I'd slain, families I'd slaughtered, babies I'd butchered, virgins I'd..." His broken voice trailed off as he turned away, his eyes welling up with tears. "Virgins I'd raped. All of it—all of the atrocities I'd committed. All the lives I'd laid waste to. All the suffering I'd caused. And the worst part of it all was that I'd enjoyed every single second of it. I'd relished in it. I'd enjoyed engineering that kind of pain and suffering, and when the Gypsies cursed me, it wasn't really the memory of all the things I'd done that haunted me most. It was the knowledge that I'd done all those things and reveled in it. And that knowledge, Bren—it ate away at me for years, just like a corrosive...like lye...wearing me down, chewing away at me, taking me piece by bitter piece until there was nothing left."

She looked back at him and blinked, her mouth falling open with a heart-crushing sympathy that, in that moment, she couldn't find words to express. But, in meeting his gaze, she knew he knew that her heart grieved for his pain, and as he nodded in acknowledgment, she mewed her lips, silently encouraging him to continue his cathartic confession.

"Nearly twenty-five years I lived that way," he said, his jowls drawn with the memory of the pain he'd lived with for so long. "Every day, every month, every year, Bren—I felt myself slipping farther and farther into a despair of a kind I never would have imagined possible. Sometimes, I thought it was best that I was what I was—a vampire, you know—because I didn't deserve to see the light of day, the weight of my sins being so heavy. I was a bankrupt, saddled with a moral debt so immeasurably great that I never thought I could have a chance at evening the breathtaking gap between the columns on my cosmic balance sheet. I deserved the punishment I'd received and more because I was beyond all help. I was beyond light, or warmth, or hope, or comfort. I was on the edge, Bren, and I knew in my heart that I deserved to be exactly where I was. I deserved it all and then some. Each dusk I awoke in agony, and each night, in the twilight before dawn, I lay in my bed, choking on my own despair."

His eyes held her gaze, but his own sight was no longer focused on the flicker in her eyes. The memory that gripped him drew the vanishing point of his attentions somewhere behind her.

"I went everywhere, Bren," he confessed in a broken voice. He leaned his head back against the chair. "But no matter what I did, or where I went—and Bren, I went everywhere, as far as China in the east, then west again along the Silk Road to Kabul, and by foot over the Hindu Kush to India, and then to the south of Africa, all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope—but nothing, none of it helped. I kept running, but I couldn't run from it because I took it all with me inside and carried it with me everywhere that I went. So I came to America—hoping that, well, that here I might be able to beat the odds and could find the hope that had escaped me in the promise of the American dream—but found myself as empty here as I was anywhere. I crossed from Texas into Mexico, then all the way down across the Isthmus of Panama, going as far as Peru, to Nazca in the south. I trekked through the Andes, hoping somehow, somewhere, I could find some way to lose the pain that weighed on me. But nothing worked. Each year I felt emptier, blacker, and more worthless than I had the year before. So I came back to the U.S., to Chicago, and made my home on the streets, wanting to lose myself in the misery of physical pain the way I was already lost in the oblivion of pain—here." He pointed to his now-beating heart. "But, Bren, after all of it, it was clear there was only one way out—and it was really no way out at all—but it was all that I had...the only thing left to try to find some peace...some release."

He turned away from her, and sighed heavily as he summoned the strength to paint the last brush-stroke of his despair, as he admitted to her something that he'd never told another living soul in almost a century...not even Brennan.

"I wanted to die," he said, his lips barely moving. "I wanted to end myself, to put an end to the endlessness of my own suffering." He swallowed hard. "The night you found me, Bren, when you saw me, and when I felt your energy prickle at my skin with a warmth that chased away some of the cold..." He placed his hand over hers, sandwiching her slender hand between his large, veiny, thick-fingered hands as he stroked his thumb over her knuckles. "But do you know what I was doing that night when you found me?"

"No," she whispered, although the quivering in her voice suggested she anticipated with a heavy dread what he was going to say to her.

"I was behind a meatpacking warehouse on Halsted Street," he said. "Not looking for blood, though. I was in the alley, sifting through scrap wood from crates and pallets, looking for the right piece to use as a stake, so I could fall on it, and end myself." His mouth fell open as if in a sob, but no cry came. "All I could see was blackness, everywhere, and that was the only way I could see to end it."

"Angel," she whispered, stroking his forearm with her slender, smooth fingertips. "I-I...I don't know what I would have done, had you..." She brought her hand up and brushed her thumb across his faintly-stubbled chin. She touched his pouting lips, which were still chapped from his stay in the hospital, and she gazed deeply into his warm, watery brown eyes. Her fingers lingered there as she leaned in close enough that she could hear his breathing. She blinked, then curled her fingers against his jaw as she brought her lips to his and kissed him softly. "Angel, I-I..."

He kissed her back with a gentleness that was at once intimate, yet almost chaste, meant as it was to bring her comfort. He then pulled away, shaking his head firmly as he squeezed her hand between his and leaned away from her slightly so he could continue speaking.

"I didn't do it, though," he said, shrugging his hand free from her stroking fingers and wiping the tears that had fallen down his cheeks away from his mouth with the back of his hand. "You were there, and you found me. And that night—that night you gave me something that enabled me to make sense of what I was, and what I'd been, and finally find a way to give my endless life some meaning. You saved me." He wiped the tears from his eyes with the side of his thumb. "And today...now, I guess...you're saying that you saved me again? I guess..." Angel sighed and lowered his gaze, staring at his lap for a minute, shaking his head from time to time as he sighed and closed his eyes, finally shaking his head one last time as he looked back up at her. "You...you know that I've never wanted to be a burden on you," he said. "Yet there you were, you know, always there to pick me up and dust me off when I'd fucked my life up in one epic fashion or the other. And now, you've done it again. I don't know why you...I just don't know..."

She was quiet for a minute and then said, "You act as if I had some great choice in the matter, Angel." Shaking her head, she said, "I didn't, you know? Not really...I didn't that night...just like I didn't have a choice—because, well...that night? I didn't have a choice that night, and I didn't have a choice today. I had to do it then and make the choice I did just as I did now. Do you...do you understand that?"

Her eyes were watering with tears that she couldn't shed as she waited for him to respond. She knew if she started to cry that all would be lost as she looked at him and so, she held her lip between her teeth and bit down, steeling herself so she could finally managed to summon enough strength to continue speaking.

"Don't you understand?" she asked him. "Since then, you've lived a life where you did what you had to do...and now that you finally got a chance to live your reward, there are people out there who are going to kill you, Angel. They will kill you, and I'll be damned if I watch them do that...destroy you...destroy everything you've worked for. I just won't do it. So...I did what I needed to do to protect...to make certain you're safe. I did it, and it's done...and..."

Her voice trailed off as she felt the lump in her throat harden. _And now, _she continued silently, her eyes watching him as she felt her heart clenching at the thought of what was to come. _There's only twenty-four hours before they're going to take you away from me. And, you know what? I'm prepared for that...I am. Or, at least, I'm as prepared as I think anyone could be given the situation. When I signed that contract, when I made the bargain, I knew that I'd...I'd have to deal with losing you. But, telling you what I've done? I think, maybe, that's the part that's going to destroy me before all is said and done. Still, I need to do this. I have to tell you...but, how can I when you're looking at me like that? God, I love you. I want you, and I love you. I-I just...oh, damn it._

"I did it," she finally managed to repeat. "But, we have a chance here now," she said, a vague wistfulness cutting along the edge of her low voice.

She swallowed, trying to keep the hard lump in her throat from choking her words. _The last chance to be with one another_, she thought grimly, unable to bring herself to tell him what she had done. _To be together, you and I, before I have to let you go._

"We have a chance, Angel," she repeated, still leaving the thought unfinished even as Angel moved closer to her.

"Bren," he whispered, tilting his head as he gazed into her cool, glimmering eyes.

"Please," she said to him, leaning in closer to him as she breathed in the faint menthol scent of his shaving cream and the warm spice of his cinnamon and sandalwood aftershave and brushed her lips against his scar-dotted jaw. "Please...please don't be angry with me, Angel. I did this to help you―to keep you safe." She rolled her lips between her teeth as she fought back the burning in her sinuses that heralded her tears. "Please don't," she said. "Please don't push me away. Just...please? Here? Now? Be with me? Stay? Don't leave me? For now...please. Oh, God, Angel. Please don't leave me. Please?"

Angel rolled his lips together as he heard the anguish in her voice. He narrowed his eyes and scanned her face, trying to understand what it was that made her voice sound so grave and broken, and the lines of her expression so long. "I'll never leave you," he said quietly. "You know that, Bren. You know what you mean to me." He opened his mouth to say more, but he saw her eyes twitch and her mouth pout, and, unable to summon the words to assuage the sadness he saw in her, he tilted his head as he brought his hands up to cup her face between his warm palms. "Bren," he whispered, then pulled her mouth to his and kissed her. Their lips met gently, almost tentatively at first as a single tear fell from Brennan's eye and dribbled over her cheek and to the corner of her mouth as their lips parted, both of them tasting the salty tear as their mouths crashed together. Brennan felt Angel's arm snake around her waist as her tongue slid between his lips, twirling against his as he moaned and his tongue chased hers, and their mouths grasped at one another with desperate want.

"Don't leave me," she sighed as they parted, each of them gasping for breath. "Please don't leave me."

"I won't," he promised. "I swear. I'll never leave you, Bren."

For a minute, as she stared into his eyes, shining as they were with such pure truth and sincerity, she very much wanted to believe him. And, for a minute, she did...even though she knew better. But, just for a minute―_just for a minute―_she allowed herself to forget.

A vague smile flashed across Brennan's lips as watched him struggle for breath and she thought how it was before the prophecy had been fulfilled and he'd regained his humanity. She remembered how he could have kissed her endlessly and never lacked for breath. She longed for the constancy, for that touch and feel of him. "I've missed you," she said as she pulled him in for another kiss, a low growl sounding from deep in her chest as she felt his tongue invade her mouth, swiping over hers as his lips pressed hard against hers and answered in kind. She let him plunder her mouth with his eager, sweet-tasting tongue until she again felt short of breath, then pulled away again, holding his lower lip between hers for a few seconds before releasing it with a soft pop. "So much," she said. "I've missed you so much. It's been too long, Angel. Even two months is too much."

"Too long," he agreed, kissing her mouth once more before laying a trail of soft, sucking kisses along the edge of her jaw, back to her earlobe. "And our next weekend. It's―fuck, Bren. It's not until Labor Day...and that's too damn far away. I don't want to wait another two damn months," he said before he pressed a more insistent kiss against her neck, just below her ear, then raised his chin a bit and nipped at her earlobe with his teeth. "I don't want to wait one month. I don't want to wait another damn second. I want to make up for the time we lost, Bren. I need to feel you. I need to taste you. I need to be inside you. I don't want to wait. I can't.." His hand slid along the outside of her thigh as his mouth worked its way back to hers.

"Then don't," she agreed. "We're here, now, together. Don't wait...I don't want to wait anymore, either. I need you to feel me, I need you to taste me, I need you to be inside me. I need...oh, God, Angel. I just need you—"

Angel cut her off with a hungry, desperate kiss as she leaned back to lay against the arm of the couch. He hovered over her, letting his hand skate over her hip to the waistband of the black yoga pants she wore. "God, I want you," he growled as he curled his fingers around the stretchy, gathered fabric and tugged a couple of times before she lifted her bottom up off the seat just enough for him to pull the pants—and the cotton panties she wore beneath them—over her hips and down her thighs. A few moments later, he tossed them to the floor next to the coffee table and knelt between her legs, covering her body with his as he leaned in once more to kiss her. Their tongues mingled together only briefly before she turned her head away.

"Are you sure?" she asked, her breathless voice almost a gasp as a small bit of reluctance edged into her tone. "I-I...I don't want you overexerting yourself on my account considering you just left the hospital two days ago." A faint smirk flashed across her lips as she knew he had left without being formally discharged. "If you're not certain, it's okay. I don't want to put too many unfair demands on you."

"I'm sure," he said, his mouth hanging open long after the answer had left his lips. "I'm fine." He then gave her a toothy grin. "Be that normal bossy self of yours that I adore. Make all the demands you want. I can handle 'em. Swear."

"Mmmm," Brennan murmured approvingly as she felt his weight press against her. "Clothes," she sighed as his arousal made its presence known through his dark, acid-washed jeans. "You're wearing too many..."

He groaned as her hands roamed down the sides of his torso to his waist, roughly jerking his shirt out of his jeans and letting her slender fingers slither underneath, her fingertips skating over the warm, smooth skin of his flat belly.

"Help me," he gasped as he sat back on his haunches, his balls tightening as he felt her pull his button-down shirt up. He raised his arms as she peeled the shirt off his body and tossed it to the side, caressing his hard chest as she brought her hands once more to his waist and went to work on the buttons and zipper of his jeans. He leaned forward into his hands and smiled, open-mouthed, at the way her breasts seemed nearly to spill over the lace-trimmed cups of her cream colored plunging demi-bra. Angel felt her nimble fingertips still working at the waistband of his pants, a couple of times skimming her knuckles across his navel as she jerked struggled with the stubborn buttons before she finally was able to pluck open the button at the top of his jeans.

"Fuck, Bren," he growled as he felt his skin flash hot beneath her touch, each of her fingertips searing him like the licking flames of a candle. He closed his eyes and remembered all the nights he'd slept alone, burning for her, yearning for her touch, and how she made him feel. Every day when he woke up, he tried to convince himself that maybe being as far away from her for as long as he'd been away wasn't quite so bad, that it hadn't been such a terrible thing to endure since, eventually, they'd find their way back to one another. Still, each night―nights he both dreaded and looked forward to closing his eyes, knowing that each lonely night he spent dreaming of her would hopefully put him another night closer to feeling her in his arms―seemed to just prove to him how unbearable enduring how he felt when they were separated had been for him. "Being away from you now? Even if it was just for a few weeks? I didn't think anything could ever be as bad as it was last year," he breathed as he winced slightly at the sound of her unzipping him. "Last year when I had to be away from you because the Senior Partners had banished L.A. to hell? Well, back then, it...it was...being away from you...from this...was the worst part..." His words fell from his lips in gasps as he let her tug his jeans and boxers over his hips. "I don't know how I can keep going back, Bren. I don't...I hate leaving you and you leaving me, even if it's just for a little bit. I'm so tired of doing without, of giving you up. I want—"

Angel closed his eyes as he felt her slender fingers touch the naked skin of his hip. He felt a flash of emotion burn in his nostrils as he reflected on how, each time they visited one another, the last day together felt a little gray, draped by the pall of their imminent separation. Each time he left her, or watched her as she walked away, his heart would ache deeply. The last time, he'd even felt his eyes prick with tears as he'd watched her step into the cab that would take her to LAX when she refused to let him drive her there. It hurt him badly, watching as she turned to look out the back of the cab window, her fingers parted in a final wave of farewell as their eyes locked on one another until each was just a distant and blurry point behind them. Each parting wounded him more deeply than the last and there was a part of him that knew it was as bad for Brennan.

Even as he touched her, and she touched him, a part of him couldn't help but remember the dream he'd while he was in the hospital, and how wonderful it felt to wake up next to her morning after morning, without having to think about when the calendar would yank them apart again. He remembered the way her skin had looked in that dream, her bare white shoulders bathed in the faint yellow light of morning as she lay asleep in the bed next to him of their bedroom in their place and how much he wanted that dream to be reality. The words caught in his throat before he looked away from her and coughed. When he'd cleared his throat, he looked over and caught her eyes on him once more. What he saw in them moved him so much that he was unable to help himself when he spoke.

"I don't want to go back," he confessed suddenly, his words stilling Brennan's movements. He looked to her, seeking her eyes, and saw a flash of panic there as he saw her flushed cheeks pale somewhat even as he felt her freeze and tense beneath him.

Not certain what to make of it, he wondered if she took his statement as a way of saying he wanted to move in and squeeze himself into her life. Not wanting to make her feel smothered if she wasn't ready to share herself in that way with him, he quickly amended his statement to cover all his bases.

"That is, there's this part of me, Bren," he said. "You know, a part of me that doesn't want to go back if it means I have to be away from you. A hundred and forty-odd years, Bren—almost a century and a half..." He reached back, trying to shift away from her enough that he could wriggle himself out of his jeans, one awkward leg at a time, unwilling to go without her touch for even the few seconds it would take to disrobe. "If I could figure out some way for us to make it work so that we didn't have to be apart from one another. I-I...I thought after the changes we made last fall that it would be enough. But it's not, Bren. At least, it's not for me. The more I have...it's not enough. I need more. I need you...I need _more_."

She was quiet for a minute and then said, her voice thick with emotion, "What are you trying to say to me, Angel?"

He raised his eyebrows expectantly, cocking his head to the side as he looked down at her and smiled warmly. "After all that time, Bren..." He gazed into her pale eyes and felt almost as if he were falling into them as he leaned in and brushed his lips against hers, laying a soft, gently plucking kiss on her lips. "And everything we've shared..." He kissed her again, his time letting the tip of his tongue skate across the cleft between her silky lips before she parted them to accept his kiss. He murmured into their kiss for a moment before delicately pulling away again. "And Chicago..." The night in 1923 when she found him, pulled him in from the streets and took him in, the night that a part of her soul became cleaved to him, changed everything between them. When they spoke of it, they did not name the date or call it anything but by the name of the city where it happened. It was a code, a watchword, shared between them. Again his mouth clutched at hers, gingerly but with equal measures of comfort and want. "We've been woven together, Bren," he said between kisses. "No matter how far away either of us goes, or how long we're apart, we're one person."

He smiled and pursed his kiss-reddened lips, encouraging her to smile or laugh or do anything to show him that she felt the same way.

"You know that, right?" he asked her softly. "You trust it, don't you? You...you trust us?"

Brennan licked her lips for a moment and then answered slowly, "I've always trusted that, since the very first night. It's the one constant that I know can get me through this, Angel. I just don't know what to think―"

"Don't," he said quietly. "Don't think, lass. Just feel. Feel that trust. It's not something that can be thought. You either do or you don't. So tell me...do you or not?"

For a minute, once again, she could feel herself hanging on the edge of a swirling drain, merely holding on my the tip of her toe. She desperately wanted to give in, to surrender herself to the inevitability of the feelings he evoked in her, had always educed in her. As he waited, pleading at her to give into him once more, she felt her tenuous hold on the need she'd felt to face the inevitable fall away. Nodding at him, she wordlessly leaned forward into his touch.

"It's so easy to trust, Bren," he whispered, as he reached behind her to unclasp her bra and slid its straps over her shoulders and peeled the cream-colored garment away from her body, letting it fall to the floor as he looked down to admire the way the pale, ample flesh of her breasts swayed as she moved. "So easy to trust...the only things that either one of us always knows we can only trust. Because you and me, lass? We're one."

"Even though we're separated," she added, her brow knitting at the obviousness of the statement as the words seemed to come from her as if falling carelessly from her grasp. "We keep coming back to each other. Just one. We're...just...one."

"Yes," he said, the pupils of his brown eyes pulsing as he leaned his head down and kissed her, swallowing the moan that sounded in her throat as he entered her in a single swift stroke. Their mouths fused and murmured against one another in a rhythm that echoed the way their hips moved together. "One," he grunted as they broke apart, reluctantly, succombing to the need for air.

He drove into her with firm, straight, determined strokes, encouraged by the way her fingertips dug into his hips and pulled her into him, and the way her neck arched over the arm of the couch, exposing a long plane of ivory-smooth skin that his lips were helpless to resist. Angel surged into her, his movements steady and wavelike, his hips undulating like the surf against the rocky western coast of his native land.

"Oh God, Angel," Brennan moaned as she shivered at the touch of his lips, which laid soft, sucking kisses along the curve at the base of her neck. "Oh, God..."

She pulled him closer, wanting to take him into her as deeply as she could, and she brought her legs up, crossing them loosely behind him. She smiled as the shift in her posture suddenly seemed to inspire him to move more quickly and to pound more vigorously into her. Brennan sighed, sliding her hands up his sides to cup the rounds of his shoulders, then down the back of his shoulder blades, letting her neatly-trimmed fingernails scrape against his skin. She felt herself begin to fall into a deep spin as the field of her vision narrowed, and it seemed that all she could see was his face: his mouth hanging open a little as soft, scarcely-audible grunts punctuated each of his relentless strokes, and his eyes, their brown warmth eclipsed by desire and gleaming in the afternoon sun.

Angel leaned into her harder with each stroke, grinding his pelvis against hers in a way he'd learned a century earlier that drove her out of her mind, and he watched with satisfaction as the creases in her forehead faded and her eyelids fluttered shut in the moments before he felt her body clench tightly around him, then suddenly relax and spasm as she broke beneath him with the now comfortingly familiar tingle of blue electricity that had always accompanied their couplings enveloping them both.

"Oh, God," she moaned as she shattered in release. "Ohhhh...ohhhh..._Angel!"_

He had been holding himself together with the very last threads of his self-control, but as she quivered around him, he let go, collapsing into a free-fall of his own and, after one last, hard-grunting thrust, exploded inside of her as the bright blue light flashed and crackled, pricking at his skin as his mouth fell open in relief.

"Bren," he sighed as he held himself as deeply inside of her as he could while the last pulses of his release faded. His head dropped to his chest as he labored to catch his breath, a memory flickering in the back of his mind as he remembered what it was like to take her and never lack for breath, in the century and a half before he'd regained his humanity. "Oh, lass, you're good...so good."

Brennan smiled at hearing his old term of endearment, uttered in a voice that had long since lost its honeyed brogue. She brought her hand to his jaw and pulled him in for a deep, searching yet brief kiss. "And...you," she said, her words choppy as she panted for breath. "You're...no less impressive today than you were a century and a half ago, Angel."

A grin cracked his release-slackened face. "I'd hope I'm a little better, after all these years," he quipped.

Brennan arched an eyebrow and shrugged slightly. "You are," she conceded.

"Oh?" he said, wagging his eyebrows. "And how's that again?"

"Well," she told him. "You're still just as handsome as you ever were, just as skilled...but, you're more gentle than you used to be. More tender...and a little more patient, I'd say," she admitted, "You're more able to bide your time...maybe not today, but when you want to be, anyway." She stopped and then shook her head as she smiled lightly and said, "You used to be so damn impatient."

He gave her a bit of a toothy grin as he rolled them over so that they were spooning on their sides—not an easy task to accomplish given how they'd collapsed onto the couch. She felt a bit of sadness when she felt him slip out of her, but it was soothed when he pressed a kiss to her shoulder blade.

"You say it like impatience is always a bad thing," he said as he drew an arc across the edge of her shoulder with the side of his thumb, then brought his hand to cup her upper arm. He squeezed her arm gently, smiled against the skin of her shoulder and said, "It isn't always, you know."

"Yes," she agreed, her voice faint. "I know."

"I mean," he said. "If you hadn't been so damn impatient to pull me out of whatever ambush you thought I was walking myself into, I don't think we would've been able to share this lovely little _tête-à-tête._"

He paused, wrapping his arm over her hip, and not stopping until he successfully sought out one of her hands. When he found what he was looking for, he pried her long, slender fingers apart so that he could interlace them with his own, larger, thicker ones.

"And even though this is the last place I'd have expected to be when I woke up today, I'm really glad you did whatever it was that you did to bring me here."

Brennan blanched at his words, shivering a little as she realized he had no idea what lay before him.

"I know I've said it before," he smiled, "and I know that I'll probably say it again, but I've missed you, Bren." He took a deep breath and swallowed the emotions he felt simmering in his chest. "I missed you so damn much." He stopped, using the leverage he had by clasping her hand to pull her back more tightly against his chest. "I've missed you...so...very...very...much." He punctuated each word with a kiss that made Brennan feel lightheaded. He stopped and then said, "You know, the only thing that I'm feeling a bit off-put about is the fact that you came all that way to L.A. last week, and then came to that damn hospital—which I ended up in because of a stupid mistake on my part—and you didn't stay long enough to even say hello."

Resting his head on her shoulder, he added, "If I'd known you were there, I think it might've been incentive for me to get my ass better all that much quicker." Brennan turned her head and arched an eyebrow as she remembered what Spike had told her about how Angel seemed to emerge from his coma once she'd become airborne en route to L.A., but bite her tongue knowing that such things probably didn't matter anymore in light of the fact that in just a few hours she'd be letting him go forever. "You know?" he asked her, tilting his head up at hers expectantly.

"I-I..." Brennan's voice hesitated as she looked into his eyes to see if he was holding something back from her or not. Eventually, when she recalled that Angel had never been the one to do 'subtle,' as he usually claimed, she decided he wasn't. Thus, she offered in continuation of her prior sentence, "I'm sorry that I couldn't stay."

"It's okay," he murmured into her ear, stifling a partial yawn as he felt so comfortable in his physical satiation that Angel knew he could fall asleep quite contentedly right where they were with no complaints whatsoever. "Look, Bren," he said quietly, pressing another kiss against the smooth skin of her shoulder. "I know that...well...I know you would've stayed longer if you could've. Okay? I _do _know that. I really do. I know how tough it is, Bren...for you to get away like that, at the last minute..." His voice trailed off as he felt himself flagging in his fight against the drowsiness that sought to claim him. "You...you've always been the best. You...you're the only one, Bren...the way you take care of me." He made a humming sound as he kissed her shoulder again more languidly. "You know," he continued, his voice deep as the words fell lazily from his tongue. "The way you've always...only wanted the best for me. I know that. I've always known that. And I always will, too."

With each word that he said, it felt as if he'd taken her silver dagger, thrust it into her belly, and was tearing her insides out. The pain of it made her eyes water. Torn between wanting to let him enjoy the peace she seemed to bring him and also knowing that such peace would evaporate when he finally found out what she'd done, Brennan at last acknowledged the fact that she owed him the truth if nothing else.

Reluctantly, she felt another stab of pain as she slowly pulled her hand free from his and moved away from him as she struggled to sit up.

Almost as if he could sense the worry and pain she felt, Angel's soporific haze melted away, a grunt escaping from his lips as he, too, struggled to sit up. "Bren?" he asked, when he finally managed to get upright. "What's wrong? What is it?"

Swallowing heavily, Brennan's voice wavered as she said, "I-I...there's something I need to tell you, Angel. Something I've got to tell you...that you need to hear, that you have a right to hear...but, I'm not quite certain how to tell you."

He fell quiet for a moment, his heart suddenly racing as his face paled slightly at hearing her words, and his stomach murmured then clenched as he felt fear percolate through his gut. "Now you're scaring me, Bren," he said, raking a nervous hand through his sweaty hair.

After a long moment of silence, when her faint response finally came, Angel mentally cursed himself for no longer possessing the same keen hearing he'd had before he'd become human once more. He could barely make out Brennan's response when she finally said, "I think I've scared myself."

Not certain he wanted an answer, but knowing he could hardly back down given what she'd just said, Angel repeated his earlier statement, "What is it?" He reached out, placing a hand lightly on her leg, noticing immediately that his touch caused her to flinch in response. Her response made him hurt and made him even more desperate to understand what she was trying to say to him. "Please, Bren. Whatever it is...just...just tell me. Please?"

Unable to bring herself to look him in the eyes, her voice still faint, she finally answered, "I've done something that I know you're not going to like." She hesitated for a fraction of a second before she added, "As a matter of fact, I can guarantee you won't like it. I knew that...I _know _that, and I still did it anyway. It-it...just couldn't be helped. I-I just...I did it. I did what I had to do."

Angel looked at her, a thousand thoughts swirling in his head before he realized there was nothing he could say or do until she told him more. "Okay," he nodded at her. "I'm sure...well, uhhh, I'm sure you had your reasons, Bren, for doing whatever you did. You know I trust you―"

Suddenly, Brennan's red rimmed eyes snapped up as she shook her head furiously. "You won't," she breathed. "After you know...after I tell you what I've done?" she told him. "You won't trust me. Hell, you probably won't even want to see me ever again...even if I hadn't already taken that choice away from you, too."

"Bren," he began, not quite sure what she was trying to tell him. _Is she leaving? _he wondered. He remembered when she took the job that brought her from Chicago to Washington. _Maybe she's been offered a job overseas, _he thought_ A long-term one where we won't be able to make this thing of ours work anymore? Maybe that's it_? He raised his eyebrows expectantly, pleading with her to tell him something, for in that moment, nothing she'd told him really made sense and he felt completely in the dark. "I'm sure that―"

"No," she said fervently. "No. I―" She paused, biting her lip as she said, "I've got to tell you. Before it happens, you deserve to know. From me. I've got to be the one to tell you what I've done. You―" her voice trailed off, growing thick with emotion, and it took her a minute before she could regroup enough to continue. "You at least deserve that much―more actually. You deserve so much more. But, I have to give you at least that much."

A clawing sense of fear continued to tear at him as he heard the dark gravity in her words and the uncertainty on the edges of her voice. Trying his best to remain calm, Angel swallowed once as he realized how very dry his throat had suddenly become. After another minute, he nodded at her and then said, "Tell me. Please, Bren. Just...tell me."

She looked at him for a minute, and then slowly nodded. "The reason," she started to explain. "The reason I brought you here―had you brought here, Angel? It doesn't have anything to do with some...well, you weren't in any immediate danger that I saved you from. It wasn't―it wasn't like _that_. There wasn't someone who was getting ready to break into the Hyperion or a threat that had somehow managed to compromise your security. At the moment I had you brought here, you were safe...but it was only temporary. And, that's why I did it."

"Did _what_?" he finally managed to ask, scratching the back of his head as he narrowed his eyes and shook his head in confusion. "What are you talking about? What did you do?".

"I-I..." her words again trailed off as her voice cracked with emotion. Her red eyes began to water again as she looked away from him. She sucked down several mouthfuls of much needed air before she could try again. After a minute, she said, "You know how much of the past year that I've spent terrified for you, Angel?" She paused and then shook her head before continuing. "And, I don't just mean that I've been terrified about what might happen to you in the course of a normal patrol, although God knows that I've been scared that some vampire or demon that you tussled with might get a lucky shot in and then you'd be gone."

"Bren," he said quietly, holding his mouth slightly agape as he took a breath to steady himself. He knew it was very important in that moment for him to hold things together. His heart thundered in his chest as he knew that, whatever it was that Brennan was working herself up to tell him, was probably not good, judging by the way his otherwise level-headed, emotionally even-keeled lover seemed rattled by whatever it is that she had to say, but he knew she'd never say it if he panicked and didn't keep things truthful and yet on an even keel with her and for her. "I can't lie to you," he told her. "You...you know the world I live in―the world_ we _live in―is a dangerous one. And, yeah, one night, I might be off my game and something might happen and someone might get a lucky shot in. Shit happens. But it's what I do. Now, I know that may scare you, but if it helps, that's why we take as many precautions as we do."

"Precautions like the ones that you took before you fell out of a third floor window and ended up in the hospital for two weeks with a skull fracture and a swollen brain?" Brennan asked, as she lifted her tear-stained gaze to his. "Something that happened to you, I might add, because we both know that the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart are still pissed at you, Angel. They're angry with you for more reasons than I can possibly enumerate, and they want revenge. That's why they've done whatever they could to make you public enemy number one. They know that now that you've fulfilled the terms of the Shanshu Prophecy and have gotten your life back―but now...now that you're human? They think―no, they _know _that you're more vulnerable then you were before, and they won't stop until you're dead and buried―for good, this time. "

"Come on, Bren," he groaned. "I've been dealing with Wolfram and Hart and their demon friends for years. And you know me well enough to know that it wasn't just me being a vampire that kept me alive and beating them time and again. Alright? Give me a little bit of credit, mmm? From Lindsey to Lilah to them bringing Darla back to fuck with my head and do me in to them offering me the keys to the castle before L.A. literally went to hell—I beat 'em, Bren, every time, and I can do it again, even though I'm human and mortal now. You know I can. I'm stronger and smarter and faster than they are, and I'm _very _good at what I do."

"That's not the point, Angel," Brennan said, grinding out her words. "What happened to you—"

"Bren," he said, cutting her off. "Look, I know that now that I've been de-vamped that I'm not the same as I was before, but I know that. I swear I do. And, I _do _try to be as careful as I can. But, I still―that's the world I live in. It's what I do. I can't...all of that comes with. It's part of the deal."

She looked at him for a long minute and then nodded, "I know that. I do, Angel. I know it more than you probably think I do."

She paused, turning away from him, her voice once again becoming choked with emotion as she realized the truth of his words. _All of that comes with. _The Powers that Be might've released him from his obligations as their Champion, but still he held fast to those duties as if they were cleaved to him. In a sense, they were. He was a warrior at heart, having been a warrior for so long that it was his second nature. She knew he still carried a heavy mantle of guilt, despite the passage of time and despite everything he did to work for good and against evil in the world since he regained his soul in 1898 and discovered a sense of self in 1923. Narrowing her eyes, she realized he'd never spoken of a life after being a Champion—not a word about going back to school or finding an occupation or settling down to make some sort of normal life. Setting aside the gravity of the 'battle between darkness and light,' as he called it, it seemed he reveled in the chase and the excitement he felt when he was hunting evil. She had little doubt that he would scoff at the suggestion that he hang up his superhero's cape and live a normal life for once.

She shook her head, an epiphany suddenly occurring to her and making her―for the first time since she'd summoned the One and made her bargain―confident in her choice and somewhat vindicated. She knew in that moment that Angel would never, ever be able to walk away from the fight. He was too addicted to the lifestyle. She knew then, for certain, that he could never completely give it up, not for anything or anyone―not even her.

Sadly, she looked up at him as she sighed, "You'll never walk away from it." She stared at him for a moment, then closed her eyes as she tried to collect her thoughts. "I've known that for a while, but I think―no, I'm certain that I only really came to know that for certain when I walked into that hospital waiting room...the one that was just a few feet away from your room, and I was standing there with Spike telling me what had happened, and he handed me your chart, and when I was going through it, I think that's when it finally hit me―they didn't get you that time, but they would eventually because you'd never be free of it, never be free of that life no matter what you've said or how you've tried to make the future different from the past. You couldn't give it up because that's who you are. You're a champion. It doesn't matter whether you're a vampire or human, you still have to fight the good fight...even though, unless someone did something to intervene, in the end, it would kill you."

Something about the measured cadence of her words, together with the way it all seemed to lead to a conclusion that he needed saving, and something almost _final _about her words, told him she had done something—something very big and very serious. His voice was grave when he finally asked, "Did you...did you do something, Bren?" He paused a beat and then added, "Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Finally, swiveling her head to meet his questioning gaze, she nodded gravely. "Yes, I did," she answered as she tried to summon enough strength to give him the explanation she knew she owed him. Swallowing again, she sniffled in spite of her promise to herself not to cry as she explained, "You have no idea what it was like for me, Angel―no idea. I spent all that time getting from D.C. to L.A., and I kept thinking...I wasn't going to get there in time. I was going to get there too late. They'd waited too long to call me. I knew, I swore, that somehow I knew that you'd be dead by the time I got there...and I wouldn't even have a chance to say goodbye."

"Bren―" He looked at her with the same question that had hung between them earlier even as his voice softened, and he tried to mitigate some of the pain he knew she still felt because of the injury he'd sustained.. "I'm so sorry that you had to go through that. I swear to God, if there'd been some way I could've spared you that, I would've. I-I...it kills me to think that you were scared and hurt because of me."

"I know," she said with a soft sniffle. "I know. But, it still happened, Angel. And, it scared me badly...so very badly, because I was so certain that I'd lost you," she explained. "That's why...once I knew you were going to be okay...that's why I did what I did, Angel. That's why...that's why I finally did it."

"Did what?" he asked again, his voice raspy as she saw fear alight in his eyes once more. "What did you do?"

"I-I..." her words trailed off and then she gulped down one last swallow of air before she said, "I made a deal, Angel. I-I...I did what I had to do to protect you. So, I made a deal."

His jaw tensed as he looked at her and, his voice heavy with caution, asked, "What kind of deal?"

"The kind of deal where you'll be safe," she answered vaguely. "Wolfram and Hart...they won't be able to get to you. You'll be safe...and happy. You'll finally have a chance to be happy and to live the life that you deserve, Angel."

"I'm happy _now_, Bren," he said, not certain what to say since he felt that something horrible had just happened to him, although he didn't know why. "I _am_. The life I have―"

"Is gone," Brennan suddenly interrupted him, cutting him off with a terse clip of her words. She looked at him, her eyes blazing with emotion as she said with a shake of her head, "It's gone. That life? It's done and over, Angel. It's gone...and you'll have a new life...a safer life, where you'll be free...and happy."

"What do you mean it's _gone_?" he asked, his mouth hanging open in stunned surprise. "It's my life, Bren," he said, gritting his teeth as the muscles of his neck and shoulders suddenly tensed and the frustrated confusion in his warm brown eyes smoldered into anger. "You understand? _My _life...I mean, come on. Don't you think I should get to have some kinda say in this?" He threw his hands up and rubbed his face, as if he could somehow wipe away the unreality of what was happening to him.

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "Not anymore...not...no. That life is gone now."

A flash of frustration at feeling both uninformed and out of control made him snap. "What the fuck does that mean, Bren? 'That life is gone now.' What the fuck does that even mean? It's not like you can keep me from going back to it...not unless you're planning on keeping me tied up for a whole fucking hell of a lot longer than you've ever done before."

"No," she said, her voice still sad as she responded. "This doesn't have anything to do with me tying you up."

"Then you can't keep me from going back," he said, grinding out each of his words before he held his hands up, his fingers curled clawlike as he shook his head in frustrated defiance. "You can't, Bren. I mean, I care about you. I care about you so damn much. I mean, what I feel for you? It's more...so much more than I've ever felt for another person. But, no matter how I feel about you, that doesn't mean you can keep me from living my life. The life I _have _to live. You can't just snap your fingers and make me do what you want me to do just because you think it's best for me anymore than I can do the same for you, Bren. You just can't."

"Yes, I can!" she snapped. "I can if it's that life that you lead in L.A., that one that was going to get you killed, Angel."

"No," he insisted, suddenly standing up and bending over to grab his jeans, which lay on the floor in a crumple next to the coffee table. He shook his head, his jaw hard as he stood before her, nude, his skin still glistening with sweat as he growled, exhaling hard as he tried to pull himself together. "You can't. This isn't your call, Bren. It's not...you just can't keep me from going back."

"Yes, yes, I can," she repeated. "I can if...if you can't remember it, I can."

Her eyes suddenly widened as she realized what she'd just said. A look of shock washed over Angel before his jaw tensed again, and he cocked his head the side and shot her a narrow-eyed look as he slowly shook his head.

"What did you do?" he asked, his voice taking on a dangerous edge as he walked over towards her fireplace. "What did you do, Brennan?" he asked, his jaw clenched so tight he felt his temples ache. He stared at the knick-knacks on the mantle for a couple of seconds as his mind spun, wanting desperately to believe that what he feared was not, in fact, so. "What, huh?" He emphasized his words by shaking his balled-up jeans in the air. "What did you do?" he asked her again.

She knew she was in trouble when he called her by her full name.

But, still, knowing the die had already been cast, she said, "I did what I had to do, Angel. I did what I had to do to protect you, to save you. I-I...I made the deal I needed to make to ensure that you'd be safe and happy."

"What did you do?" he asked again, his words dangerous as he questioned her. "Tell me. Tell me...exactly...what did you do to me? I heard what you said. You made a deal. You did what you had to do. 'That life is gone.' Cut the crap, Bren. Enough with vague bullshit, okay? For fuck's sake tell me. Exactly what sort of deal did you make?"

"I told you," she said, refusing to back down from the intense display of anger that she'd knew she'd have to face from him―indeed, what she knew she deserved only too well to face and had tried to prepare herself for since she'd signed her bargain with The One. "I made a deal that will protect you."

"From what?" he growled, shaking out his jeans and stepping into them, one leg at a time, as he looked up at her, his lower jaw jutting forward as he shook his head and jerked his jeans over his hips. "Huh? Who are you protecting me from, huh?"

"Well, for starters, how about the Senior Partners?" she said, letting her own strong emotions finally bubble to the surface in response to his display of anger. They quickly swept aside the fear and sadness and the despair that had been threatening to overwhelm her just a moment earlier. "Like I said, you know they won't stop until you're dead."

"Bren, you don't know—"

"Then, of course," she continued, with a gesture of both her hands at him, "There's anyone who's ever had reason to seek revenge against you for things that happened during your days as Angelus."

"I've been dodging them for more than a century, Bren," he said, placing his hands on his hips, flexing his biceps in a way that he knew she'd notice. Tilting his head to the side, he said with a cocky flicker in his eyes, "I can handle them."

"To say nothing of any random vampire, demon, or idiot human with a gun that might be in the right place at the right time to finally take you out," Brennan muttered as she looked away from him. "So, with all that in mind, yes, Angel, I made a deal. I made a deal...and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that it has to happen like this, but I did it, and it's done. There's no undoing it, no going back. I drew a line...and that line...we can't—it's a point of no return. I swear to you that I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you, as best I can, but I won't...it had to be done, Angel. It had to be done."

_It had to be done. _The muted vagueness of his words, whether meant to soften the blow to him or dampen the emotional impact of the admission on her, did nothing more than further infuriate Angel.

"_What?!_" he yelled, turning around and smacking the fleshy side of his fist against the wall next to her fireplace. The tips of his ears burned red with anger as his bare chest heaved with each rising breath. "_What_ had to be done?" he demanded, pounding his fist against the wall again before he turned around and walked back towards her. "Damn it, Bren. Quit pissing around with all this vague bullshit. Just tell me what you did. You were scared. You were worried about me. You did something. You made a deal―some type of deal which can't be undone and it has something to do with my memory. But..." His nostrils flared as he struggled to contain his frustration and trepidation, and reflexively his voice quieted in response to him suddenly feeling very small and very out of control. "What's...what's going to happen to me?"

Taking a deep breath, Brennan said, "I made a deal—"

"With whom?" he interrupted. "Tell me, dammit! Quit playing fucking games and tell me."

Shaking her head, she said, "It doesn't matter. What does matter is that...you're going to have a new life. A new life...a new identity...a new name and a new job...a new family. Everything..." She felt the familiar pain in her belly flair at the look he shot her. Still, her voice cracking, she finished, "You're finally going to have everything that you've always wanted, everything that will make you happy. And, they won't be able to find you. You'll be safe, and you'll...you'll be happy."

He considered her words, paling as he finally realized the magnitude of what she'd done. "Oh, God," he muttered. "Fuck. So..."

Angel leaned his head back and swallowed as he felt a wave of nausea wash over him. _No, _he thought. _No, this can't be. This can't fucking be. Not after everything. Not after all of it, now that we're finally figuring it out. Oh, God. Fuck, no. We were so close. God, Bren. No. No, no, no. This can't be fucking real. This has got to be the worst, most fucking intricate nightmare ever. This can't be happening. Fuck me_. _Oh, holy fucking hell._ He covered his face with his hands and let out a long, labored sigh.

"So, " he said grimly. "This...this is what it feels like?"

Confusion clouded Brennan's face as she said, "What what feels like?"

"I-I...is this karma?" he asked her, his voice choking slightly as he blinked at her a few times, his eyes wide and gleaming with pain. "Is this payback for what I did before? To Buffy? To Connor?"

"No," Brennan said. "But, I-I...I don't know what the Slayer has to do with anything, but don't you...well, Connor. You did what you had to do to protect him. To keep him safe. To make him happy. So, you should understand, right? You know why I did what I did. What you did for Connor? It's, well... I'm just doing the same thing for you."

"Jesus," he muttered, running his hand through his hair. "I-I...oh, God. Bren...what did you do? I-I...I know you meant well, but how could you...how could you act so...so unilaterally?"

Brennan looked away and remembered the conversation she'd had with her old witch friend the night before she summoned The One. _"You are doing a very exceptional thing, Temperance," the elder witch had said in her clipped accent, quirking a perfectly-waxed eyebrow as she pursed her lips. "You're taking it all in your hands, and in so doing, taking every modicum of choice out of his. Be very careful. Your intentions are good, noble even, but in taking away his free will, he may not see through it to see...to see why what you did was right."_ She sighed and shrugged, unable to offer him an answer in that moment as her friend's words echoed in her mind.

"You did this, all on your own?" he asked. "Without even asking me? You didn't think to consult me. Why?"

"Because," she muttered. "I knew what you'd say. I knew if I gave you a choice that you'd fight me on it."

"So, because you thought I'd disagree, you went ahead anyway?" he asked. "Thanks a fucking lot, Bren. God damn it. So I'm only to be consulted when you think I'll agree. I mean, fuck, Bren. This is...well, us..we're...shit! Some kind of fucking partnership this is. I mean, just..._fuck_."

Looking away from her, he gulped down a breath of air and then asked, "So...what? Is this a memory thing? Am I being given someone else's life or did you just make it all up for me?"

"No," she said. "It won't...the memories...well, it's hard to explain. But, it won't be like what happened with Connor. There's more to it than that. You're going to be given a new life, Angel. Here, in D.C. It'll be your life...a life you actually lived."

He was quiet for a minute, and then said, "And, I won't remember anything but that life?"

Continuing to feel as if he'd stabbed her with a knife, Brennan could only croak, "No, you won't...but I'll remember you."

He let out a small anguished cry at her words―although Brennan wasn't sure his reaction because of what he'd be losing or what she'd be keeping memory-wise. He turned away from her, shaking his head as he looked away, his eyebrows knit together in and weighing heavily over his dark, deep-set eyes. The muscles of his jaw had hardened as he gnashed his teeth together.

After another minute, he took a short breath and held it, then let it out in a loud grunt of anger.

"I've walked this earth for more than two and a half centuries. In all that time—time that _you're_ stealing from me—do you know what hurts the most, Bren?"

Miserable, she could only shake her head by way of an answer.

"In taking the good with the bad, you're taking away..." He paused, swallowing once, tears welling in his eyes as he told her, "You're stealing from me the one thing that means more to me than my own life. You're taking away...you're stealing _yourself_ from me." Shaking his head, some of the tears finally warbled down his cheek as he turned to finally face her when he said, "Oh, God, Bren. How could you...why did you do this to me? To _us_? Why didn't...why didn't you trust me? Trust us? I don't...I thought...I thought...you and me. I thought we were for keeps, remember? You and me...we were gonna make this thing work? We were trying to find a way. When did that change? I thought we were...oh, God, Bren."

She stared out the window for another moment, pulling the woven afghan around her naked body more tightly, before she sighed, turned around, and faced him once more. He was still angry, she could tell, but the anger had sublimated somehow into something else―an exasperated sadness. It had lessened to more of a dull roar than the initial blast of pure emotional shock that had originally flashed so brightly before her like flash paper ignited by an errant spark before her very eyes. It seemed as if he'd gotten a grasp on it, and was now turning that anger inwards once more against himself, replaced the outward-facing anger with an overwhelming sense of sadness and regret. He did that often, she knew, since the time she'd come to know him so very well from the happy years they'd shared together in Chicago after they'd first bonded. He'd never been the type that she'd say would brood when he was Angelus, but after he was ensouled, brooding became a way he dealt with his anger.

Still—whether he was Angelus or Angel—it didn't matter to her, as she'd never been one to let his anger or anything else about him intimidate her. As he looked at her, his jaw was rigid, and his dark eyes flickered as he studied her, and they each waited to see if the other would speak first. Still, Brennan took her time, and only when she was ready did she open her mouth to speak.

When she did so, the first words out of her mouth were not the ones that either one was quite expecting.

"Why have you kept coming back to me?" she asked him.

The question surprised her, because she hadn't expected the words to tumble out of her mouth, but they did. And, once the question was out in the open between them, she shrugged slightly, figuring the question that had plagued her mind the most in recent years was as good a place as any to start.

For his part, taken slightly off guard by her question, some of the hardness from his face fell away as he tried to figure out how to respond, especially since they'd both agreed to be completely honest in this exchange. His hand absentmindedly went to his head as he ran his fingers through his hair, and looked down at his feet, as he tried to formulate some type of answer. His eyes darted to the open waistband of his jeans that he'd hastily pulled on in anger, but hadn't yet fastened. The blue of the denim inspired him for a minute and then he smiled as he finally knew it was a place to start.

"Your eyes," he said. "I know, it sounds strange, but I guess that's as good a place as any to start. Your eyes have always been a mystery to me. They're beautiful, it's true, but every time I looked into them, I was never certain what I was going to see. Sometimes it would be playful mischief. Sometimes I would see that wicked competitive streak of yours. Sometimes I would see anger―that vicious, broiling anger you summon up every so often. Sometimes, most rarely, I think, I'd see a kind of tenderness there." He paused, then smiled faintly as he delighted—as he always had—in the fact that he'd been one of the rare and privileged few whom she'd ever let glimpse that part of herself . "A vulnerability, almost." He raised his eyebrows, expecting to hear her deny it, then shrugged at her silence. "And more...there were a lot of other things that I see when I look in your eyes. But, you know, it's never the same. I never really know what I'm gonna see. And, I suppose, that's what first attracted me to you."

"At first?" she asked, her voice soft. "My eyes were all that kept you coming back to me...at first?"

"Okay," he grinned at her. "Maybe that's not quite all of it."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," he admitted. "You were a challenge to me. Here you were, this gorgeously fuckable woman—that in and of itself would've been enough to get my attention. But, not only were you beautiful, you were smart and confident and so completely and utterly sure of yourself. You never, not once, ever feared me. And, more than that, you somehow got it into your head that because you didn't fear me that you could toy with me, play with me, try to do whatever you wanted to me. I mean, fuck, woman—you were the first person who'd ever thought that she could completely and utterly have her way with me whenever and however she wanted, no questions asked, comments made, or complaints registered. And you know what?. No one, not a single person in a century since I'd been made had ever been so brash. I couldn't intimidate you. I couldn't scare you. I couldn't manipulate you in any significant way if you didn't want to give me what I wanted from you. It was so completely infuriating, and so fucking hot at the same time. It just made me want you even more..." He shot her a crooked half-grin and added, "If that was even possible."

"So, you're saying it was the challenge of it? Of me?" she asked, trying to understand him.

"At first," he nodded. "Yeah. I figured that if I abided by your rules long enough, I'd figure out some way to conquer you, to get you to realize that you'd finally met the bigger fish. But, the more time I spent with you, the more time I came to realize what a completely confusing woman you were..._are_, really. When you mixed that with the sex—because I wasn't lying when I said your appetites and stamina were something that I'd never really found before in another person, because, well, God, woman, but you sure could keep pace with me—well, that just made it even more intoxicating. So, that's why I kept coming back—_at first_." He placed a deliberate emphasis that Brennan noted on the last two words he'd spoken.

"At first?" she repeated his statement, inflecting his words with her unspoken question as he knew then what she was really asking him.

"At first," he nodded. "But, then, later—well, you've...you've always been different from all the others, Bren. But, you know that already." He stopped, lifting his gaze to hers as he nodded, "You've got to know that, right? Compared to the rest of them, you were always different."

At this, she felt a stab of pain as she recalled how many other women had come in and out of Angel's life in the years she'd known him.

A bit of old bitterness flared as she said, "Yes. I've always been quite good at picking up the pieces for you...whenever one of them broke your heart. Isn't that so?"

His eyes flashed again at her words, his frustration spiking as he unintentionally took a step towards her.

"Now, don't do _that_," he cautioned her.

"But, why?" Brennan asked him as she felt her own raw emotions—and long-held insecurities—well up. "It's true enough. I've spent more than a hundred and fifty years watching you fall in love with other women, enjoying their company until the blush fell off the rose, and then you ended up broken and needed to be put back together."

"God, I hate it when you do this," he muttered as he turned and looked away. _Why do you do this, lass? _he asked silently._ How can you be so insecure? You're such an incredible, confident woman all the other times. I mean, it just makes no goddamn sense at all. You're so much better than this, Bren. So much better. There's no need. No need at all. _He closed his eyes and sighed. "I really hate it."

"It's true," she said simply. "Isn't it? Because you can't honestly tell me you're going to try to deny it when I know everything that I know, Angel. Because I know it all. Remember? From the very first time, I've been there when someone else tried to break you."

His nostrils flared as he suddenly closed the distance between them, reached for her closest arm, and yanked her towards him. Her body hurtled up against hers, and he felt her body melt against his. He pushed the pounding he heard rumbling in his ears away as he used his other hand to tilt her head so that she was looking into his eyes.

"You want to know why you're really different than all the rest, Bren?" he asked, his voice taking on a hard edge to it. "Fine. Then, please, if you don't listen to anything else I say right now, listen to this. You've got to know you're the only one who's held my heart all these years. The one who's been the constant these...God, for a hundred fifty years, more or less—it's been you. It's always been you. You know it's been you." He felt her cheek warm his palm as her eyes blinked back at him, glistening as she tensed against him. Do you want to know why I've never said 'I love you' to you like I did to them?"

He hesitated and shook his head, then grunted a quiet laugh. "You probably won't believe me anyway, but..." He took a deep breath to steel himself for her response. "I knew that if I told you that, how I really feel, how I've felt about you for longer than I remember, then somehow, someway, I'd lose you. You'll do the one thing that's always kept you different from them. I thought if I told you that I love you, somehow...you'll end up betraying me. Just like all the rest of them. And, I won't do that. I won't lose you. I don't want to lose you."

She felt her nostrils flare as he finally voiced what had been one of the insecurities that had continued to chip away at her normally overconfident personality. She licked her lips for a minute, and then said in a quiet and very tiny voice, "You know...I've always thought it was because I wasn't good enough."

"What?" His eyes opened wide as he stared at her with blatant incredulity written on his face. "Are you kidding me?"

"All of them—" she explained, her voice so soft that he was, once again, having difficulty hearing them. "Every single one of them—from Darla to Buffy to Cordelia to any of the other nameless ones in between that you've fucked and loved and eventually let fall away from your life. I thought...you always left me to go back to them or to find someone new because I wasn't good enough. Because they were better than me."

Angel listened to her and remembered all the nights he'd laid in bed, his arm draped around the shoulder of some woman whose head rested snugly against his chest. He remembered laying that way, listening to his lover breathe—or, in the case of Darla, who like him had long since stopped drawing human breaths, sleepy murmurs—as his mind raced. Angel's cheeks flushed as he felt a dark, sickening wave of regret wash over him with each name that fell from Brennan's lips.

"I've always thought," she said. "Well, I thought you always told them you loved them, but you never told me that because I didn't deserve it. That you could never feel the same way about you as you did them because they were all...that you thought they were all better than me."

Angel paled. Oh, _God, Bren, _he thought. _Is that it? Is that really it? After all these years, is that...well, just...__fuck__. After all these years, the anger and the jealousy, and the way you talked about them—was because you thought you weren't good enough? _He swallowed the painful lump in his throat. _How could you ever think that? How could I ever let you think that? Jesus. I-I...I thought that—I never thought you wanted more from me. That I was the one that was never good enough for you. God, what a fool I was. Oh, fuck. What an idiot I am. What a fucking idiot. _A heavy sigh escaped his lips as he quickly shook his head.

"God, Bren," he said, squeezing her arm gently as he cocked his head to the side and pursed his lips sympathetically. "No, come on—that's not it at all. That's never been it. It's like you said. You were different from them because you were always there to set me right once one of them had knocked me down. You...you've always been there for me. And, you've never betrayed me. As much as I cared about them—still do, in a way—each one of them always did what you've _never _done."

"Meaning?" she questioned him.

"Meaning," he explained. "You always thought, from the very first second of the very first day we met, I was always good enough for you just as I was. You never tried to change me or ask me to be something or someone I wasn't. You just accepted me. You—you and me, lass? It was always an equal footing between us. Right from the very start, the very beginning. I never had to save you or impress you or be a hero for you. I never had to be more than just what I was...I-I could just be myself when I was with you, no matter who I was in that moment."

He paused and then said, "You never—" His words trailed off an then he dropped her hand as he walked away from her. He started to pace for a minute, and then said, "After I was ensouled, Darla...well, she—I wasn't evil enough for her. She was always testing me, pushing me. And, when I didn't want to feed on a fucking Christian missionary's infant just because, she left me to wander the wilds of China during a fucking civil war." He stopped he frowned and said, "Of course, I probably should've expected that since it wasn't like she hadn't cut me loose to save her own skin before. I mean, she left me to Holtz on more than one occasion—"

"But she still gave you your son," Brennan said softly.

He stopped at Brennan's interjection and then slowly nodded. "Yes," he said, his voice cracking a bit as he thought of Connor. Despite all of her betrayals, Angel held a kernel of fond gratitude to Darla for what she sacrificed to bring their son into the world since she'd given him the one thing that he never thought he'd wanted until he'd had it—fatherhood. It was only because of her that he'd had chance to have a child and to be a father to that child.. "She did. And, I'll always be grateful to her for that...for him." He paused when he saw her wince at his words. Sighing, he added, "But, don't forget that Connor was conceived in a moment of perfect despair, Bren. And, I felt that despair because of Darla. She—she's always been a bit of an Achilles heel for me, but you know that. She was my sire—the world I knew, I knew because of her. She always had promised me that she would show me a new world, and if she did one thing, that was a promise that she kept. That's to say nothing of the fact that she was the woman I shared my life with for almost hundred years before I met you. For better or for worse, she was woven into me, I guess. Part of who I was. Still is, I guess, as fucked up as that sounds." He stopped and then shook his head as he said, "Of course, she never sent me to hell, like Buffy did, so I suppose it's a bit ironic that I had a moment of perfect despair in Darla's bed, but I had a moment of perfect happiness when I was in Buffy's." He stopped, made a face, and then sighed, "God, I hate fucking irony."

Brennan's lips twisted at the mention of the Slayer. She'd always felt more than just a bit..._insecure_ when it came to the topic of Buffy and so she rarely brought it up when they were together. Not certain she was strong enough to confront Angel's past relationship with the Slayer in addition to all the other things she was facing, she said softly, "Please, don't."

"What?" he blinked at her in surprise.

"The Slayer," Brennan sighed. "I-I can't...I can't talk about her right now."

Angel looked to her and then said quietly, "You were the one who brought up the subject of women I'd been in love with, Bren. As much as it may hurt you, I loved Buffy. For better or worse, it's—"

"I know," Brennan sighed. "It's just that..." Unable to help herself, she said, "She hurts, Angel. Okay? That one there _really _hurt me."

"Why?" he asked. "I don't understand."

"Because," Brennan told him. "I-I...she...you and her..." Her voice again trailed off as she felt her frustration spike. Finally, she said, "Listen, you and the Slayer? Well, I'd say _that_ one _was_ a stereotypical mid-life crisis, since we both know she was way more than just a tad too young for you, but...why beat that horse when it's so clearly dead?"

He shot her a strange look—part annoyance, part exasperation, and part pure and simple basic maleness in his inability to comprehend why she felt the way she always had about Buffy. "You know," he said. "I've never gotten why you feel so pissy about her. I mean, if anything, I'd figure that Darla would bother you more."

"It's true that Darla was your maker and the mother of your child," Brennan answered with a slow nod. "And, that probably should make me feel more threatened by her than I do. But, the simple fact of the matter is, Angel—I've always understood your attachment to Darla. I knew her, I liked her, and she was a good friend. But, Buffy? I don't like her. She's so...pretentious. And so fucking holier-than-thou. She gives me a headache just merely thinking about her ego, honestly. I've never understood her level of arrogance, given the fact that she's, well...just not as impressive to me as she was...is to herself. So, I never understood what your attraction was to her. And, besides, Darla's gone and...Buffy isn't."

"Bren," he said. "Buffy's gone, too—gone from my life, alright, even if she's still alive. Her and me? What we had? There's nothing left there. It's gone, and it's never coming back. She's...she's nothing to me now." Angel closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "You know, she sent me to hell," he repeated. "And then chose Spike over me. And a bunch of stuff in between, to say nothing of what I did to her." He paused for a beat before continuing. "I guess there's a part of me that still loves her, but those are kinda hard things to get over. It's done, Bren. Long gone. Over."

"Which is why, I suppose, you came to me that night that you left Sunnydale, but before you moved to L.A. five years ago?" Brennan asked. "Remember?"

Slowly, he nodded. "I remember."

"I had to deal with the fallout of that breakup," Brennan remembered, bitterness creeping into her voice again. "That wasn't enjoyable...or fair, Angel."

"I know," he said, his voice soft. "But, you still did it."

"And, when I was done, I sent you back on your way so that you could fall into Cordelia's lap," Brennan said with a sigh. "I suppose I should just be thankful that she wasn't a blonde, though, huh?"

Pursing his lips, he said, "You know, Bren...Cordy...in a way, she was no different than Darla or Buffy."

"I know," Brennan sighed. "You loved her, and she broke your heart."

"She betrayed me," he said. "She...I mean, I know it wasn't her fault. But, she still—you know what happened with her and Connor."

"You mean the whole getting infected with the would-be higher power/cosmic entity thing that was passing herself off as Cordelia long enough so that she could fuck Connor, get knocked up, and give birth to something called Jasmine?" Brennan asked in a very deadpanned manner.

Angel flushed a bit at the accurate, if extremely blunt and curt, summarization that had ended his relationship with Cordelia before it had even begun. He then shot Brennan a look as he added, "You forgot the bit where she stole my soul."

Brennan immediately snapped her fingers as she said, "And set Angelus free."

"Not long enough to come and find you, though," he said with an arched eyebrow. "Lucky for you. 'Cause you know how _that _would've gone. We talked about it, remember? Say goodbye to your charming, daffodil-toting lover and say hello to lots of facetime with your bedroom wall."

Chuckling a bit, Brennan said, "It's been awhile since I handled him, but I think, if he'd shown up on my doorstep, I'd have found some way to manage." She paused and then said, "Besides, it's not like I'm not used to handling angry, brooding, sex-starved vampires who show up on my doorstep...right?"

Angel gave her a curious look and shrugged sheepishly, then said, "Do I even want to guess which time you're talking about? It's not like they're aren't a few to choose from, Bren."

"Okay," she nodded at him. "How about this one? It's the only time in our entire relationship where you ever actually put the press on me...and I let you get away with it."

A look of comprehension dawned on Angel's face as he said, "Oh, that one?"

"Yeah," Brennan nodded. "_That_ one."

* * *

**-tbc-**

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**A/N2: **We did warn you all about the flashbacks. Coming up next: a fairly long one (like this one wasn't!). How and _why _did things change between Angel and Brennan that resulted in her arrival in L.A. on Halloween 2003 (as depicted in "The After Party")? Well, stay tuned folks, because that's coming up next. And, oh, yeah. There might be something about some fangs and some serious unfness in the next chapter, but you didn't hear that from us. As ever, we appreciate any and all of you sharing your thoughts with us on the story to date. Our thanks in advance.


	3. Part III: An Earlier Deal, Part A

**The Price to Be Paid**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: , then—moving on...

**Summary: **See previous chapter.

**Logistical Notes: **See previous chapter.

**A/N: **Ummm, not a lot to say except thanks to those who have left reviews. We much appreciate (and enjoy reading) them, so keep 'em coming. And, we apologize (our standard apology) because we know the chapter wasn't this damn long when we wrote it or posted it. We blame it on the long-winded gnomes that hijacked and inflated the story at some point en route to readers. ::pause:: Yeah. That's our story, and we're sticking to it.

**UNF Alert: **So, yes. We of Dharmasera, Inc., don't like to brag too much, but we were pretty pleased with how this part turned out...and it's mostly because of the UNFness. So, seriously, if you shouldn't be reading this type of stuff (because you are not of legal, consenting age, are pregnant, or possess other physical infirmities that might be exacerbated by some guh! inducing hotness) then shoo! Seriously, we mean it. ::pause:: As for the rest of you, lay on MacDuff!

* * *

**Part III: An Earlier Deal, Part A**

* * *

Brennan stared at Angel for a long moment, her blue eyes holding his serious brown ones in an intense gaze as she confirmed that, indeed, they both knew which important memory out of more than one lifetime she was referencing. After another minute, he tilted his head slightly towards her, and Brennan knew that, for once, they were on the same metaphorical page at the same time.

_For some reason, despite the fact that it was a Friday night, Brennan had decided not to go out. She sat on her couch, her feet cocooned in soft dark blue fleece socks, with her legs tucked up underneath her. She hadn't yet showered and changed for bed yet, and so still wore the same cream-colored, short-sleeved scoopneck tee that she'd thrown on over a simple pair of black knit pants after getting home from work. She hadn't put on any make up but for a bit of vanilla and rose-scented lip balm that she wore to keep her lips soft and unchapped. Her hair was tucked up in a messy ponytail as she lost herself in the most recent edition of _Current Archaeology_. The British-based publication, while more serious in tone, and of a higher quality than many of its American counterparts, still lacked the more scholarly nature of journals that she received each quarter from organizations like the American Anthropological Association or the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. It was a bit of light reading that Brennan enjoyed more for the high glossy color photographs that graced its pages as opposed to any articles with content on groundbreaking discoveries or anthropological revelations. She liked to keep abreast of sites and trends she'd worked on in various capacities throughout the world over the past century. She'd been saving the latest issue for a time when she could enjoy it, uninterrupted and free from any of the pressure she'd been facing from other people in her life, particularly pressure of the unsolicited type._

_Most recently, she'd found herself being pursued by one of the biochemists at American University where she'd recently accepted a position as a faculty member in conjunction with her appointment to the Jeffersonian Institute. After she'd made the decision to accept the position a year before, and her relationship with Michael Stires had faded away, she hadn't really pursued any new personal relationships. Her last encounter with Angel—when he'd knocked on the door of her apartment in Chicago after he'd decided to leave Sunnydale and start his own private investigation firm in Los Angeles—had made any other relationships seem pale in comparison and extremely...well, unfulfilling, for lack of a better term. However, Dr. Peter Martin had met her at one of the Faculty Senate meetings(to which she'd been blackmailed into attending when the normal Anthropology Department representative had gotten sick with the flu) and hadn't learned to take 'no' for an answer. _

_Somehow, after filling her inbox with email after email containing subtle invitations, he'd increased his pursuit of her to include phone calls in hopes of getting her to agree to go to dinner with him. She still wasn't certain how he'd gotten her number, but figured that one of the departmental administrative assistants must've fallen victim to Peter's persistence and so had given him her personal information just to get rid of him. She was almost to that point—i.e., desperation—herself and she was actually thinking about accepting his invitation, just to get him to leave her alone after they shared one meal. However, she wasn't quite ready for that night of necessary evil to be this night, which is why she'd declined yet another one of his numerous dinner invitations. There was a part of her that found the whole thing tedious, but a small part of her found it amusing considering the fact that after Michael, the last companion she'd had had also been named Peter (whose infamous habit of watching TV after sex had earned him the nickname 'Pistol Pete' from Angel). Still, she wasn't in a mood to deal with any such men tonight since she just wanted to be alone._

_No, on this particular night, one that she wanted to herself, she'd turned off her laptop and cell phone and let herself fall into a delicious world of self-indulgence after having ordered far too much takeout from an excellent Thai restaurant near her apartment the delivered. She'd luxuriated for an hour taking a relaxing bubble bath before adjourning to her couch with her magazine and a large glass of chilled Riesling wine. Brennan was in the middle of reading an article on a recent excavation within Afghanistan, a site located at a place dating from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans when it had been known as Bactria, when she heard a firm knock on her apartment door._

_Looking up from the magazine, Brennan glanced at the clock and frowned when she realized it wasn't too late for it to be a visitor—had she been expecting one—even if she was annoyed at the inopportune timing of her unanticipated caller. With a wistful sigh, she set the magazine on the coffee table, got up, and went to answer the front door._

_On the other side of Brennan's front door, Angel stood on her doorstep, watching the yellowish light behind the peephole darken as he heard her approaching footsteps—the cadence of which he'd learned to recognize a century earlier as distinctly hers—and a fumbling with the double deadbolt locks on the door. He shifted his weight from one hip to the other as he anxiously waited for her to open the door. _Come on, Bren, _he thought. _You're killin' me here. You gonna give me the big brush-off, too? Because if you are, let's just go ahead and get it over with, alright? So come on. Let's hurry up so I can say what I need to say, you can have a hissy fit like she did, tell me you don't trust me anymore, and toss me out on my ass. Fuck. _A long sigh rumbled in his throat as he fussed with his jacket for the fifth time since arriving at her doorstep. After a few moments, he saw the doorknob turn and the door swung open with a swoosh sound, and a shaft of bright light illuminated the dimly-lit hallway. As soon as the door opened, Angel lifted his gaze and looked into the familiar pair of pale blue eyes that blinked at him in surprise._

"_Angel?" she asked, opening the door all the way and stepping back from the doorway. "Hey..." Brennan stood there, giving him an appraising look. "What..what are you doing here?" She paused and then stopped, smiling a bit as she tilted her head before she added, "I ask you that a lot, don't I?"_

"_Yeah," Angel admitted, a certain dark gravity to his voice as he stood on the doormat, his hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers. "Umm, Bren—I-I...I, uhh..." He cocked his head to one side and arched an eyebrow. _

"_What?" she asked, noting his tense body language, the worry and reticence rolling off of him in waves so pronounced that she could feel it. "What is it?" When he didn't enter, her forehead crinkled in even a deeper sense of concern. "Is something wrong? Did something happen?"_

"_I can't, ummm..." He quickly shook his head to dispel her worry and then said, "No, everything's fine. It's just, uhhh..." His voice trailed off as he raised his eyebrows with a sheepish grin, gesturing towards the doorjamb with an upward jerk of his chin. "Can you..." His voice trailed off, and as he looked at her expectantly, shuffling his feet as he jangled the loose change in his pockets. When he saw the blank look on her face, he cleared his throat and said, "Look, I don't want to talk out here. So ummm...could you?" He again gestured vaguely at the door. Tilting her head at him, she arched an eyebrow at him in askance, still not certain what he was asking her to do. Sighing, he said, "You know how this works, Bren. Right?" He reached his hand up and scratched the back of his head as she stared at him blankly. "The magic words, remember?" he asked, prompting her._

_Immediately, as comprehension dawned, a sheepish look crossed Brennan's face, "Oh," she said. "Ummm. Right. Sorry. It's just been a while since I had to do that."_

"_It's okay," he replied. "No problem."_

_Brennan opened her mouth to say something, and then abruptly closed it. She paused, tilted her head at him, and then gave him a wry smile. "So, just to make certain I understand what you're saying here, are you actually asking me to perform some magic, after all this time, huh?"_

"_Bren," he said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. His voice edged higher as the veneer of his patience began to wear thin. "Please, quit screwing around, huh, and just invite me in already? For fuck's sake."_

_Rolling her eyes, she stretched her arm up the length of the doorway as she dramatically chanted, "Hocus Pocus. Shazam. Abracadabra. Enter. Magic words spoken. I give you my permission to enter my abode." She paused, gave him a toothy grin, and then added, "Happy? Now, get your ass in here, hmmm?"_

_Angel rolled his eyes and quickly walked in, shoulders first, muttering something inaudible under his breath as he passed under the mantle and into Brennan's Georgetown apartment. "You and your magic," he grumbled. "I must've been fucking crazy to have fallen for you like I did when any other woman would've gotten me into a lot less trouble," he muttered with a snort. "Smartass witch."_

_Shutting and locking the door behind them, she chuckled as she said, "Nice to see you, too, Angel."_

"_Sorry," he murmured with a tired sigh as he shrugged out of his black sportscoat and, briefly glancing around the entryway and seeing familiar furnishings in a new setting, noted an unexpected sense of comfort, almost as if he lived there, as he walked toward large bench that guarded the foyer. _

_The cherrywood bench, which had drawers for storage underneath it, also had a large piece of pretty etched wood that ran up the back of the bench against the foyer wall. At its top, several wrought iron hooks stood waiting to accommodate hats, purses, and jackets. Looking at one of the free hooks, he took his jacket and hung it between one of Brennan's cream-colored trenchcoats and a black umbrella. _

_He pushed the bulky, square-cut belted trenchcoat aside and shook his head, wondering why a woman with curves as sumptuous and gorgeous as the ones Brennan had would possibly want to cover them up. The thought of her clad in a shapeless, double-breasted trenchcoat reminded him of the night he came to her terraced house in Cheapside shortly before he'd left for Romania. He couldn't help but smirk as he recalled how she'd opened the door wearing a khaki-colored, long-sleeved, ankle-length field dress, and how he'd made a sarcastic remark about how the dress hid all of her most delicious assets and made her look like a sexually-repressed schoolmarm. His smirk widened into a grin that flashed across his lips as he remembered how she'd tortured him that night, duly punishing him for the insult—among several others that he'd lobbed at her before everything was said and done between them—before she decided to take her chances and cut him loose so that he could let himself have at her._

_As he used a hand to brush his jacket when it was hanging straight on its hook, he turned around and looked back at her._

"_It's just...well, I-I...things are just kind of shitty for me at the moment," he said. "Or, well, yeah—actually, now that I think about it, they have been for a while." Angel stood at the edge of her foyer with his hands in his pockets and glanced around the apartment. _

_The two-bedroom apartment wasn't anything particularly extraordinary, with its white-washed, textured walls, hardwood floors and compact kitchen, but it had a fireplace and a sliding glass door that opened out to a small patio on which Brennan had situated a small bistro set and several large plants in addition to small stone knickknacks in the design of owls and other creatures of wisdom that she'd collected over the years. _

_As Angel took in the sight before him, he realized that though it was a new apartment, much of what he saw around him was familiar. An antique Oriental carpet covered the hardwood floor in front of the fireplace, and Angel smiled faintly at the memory of how many nights they'd passed on that carpet over the years. He remembered kneeling between her legs, driving into her with enthusiasm as the fire roared in the hearth in front of them, the room filled with the sounds of her peaking moans and his low grunts and growls, and he wondered how the lovely Azerbaijani rug had managed to look as new and well-preserved as it had a hundred fifty years prior. Recalling the blue energy that crackled between them as her groans peaked in a breathy sigh, he wondered if she'd called upon her magic to keep the carpet tidy and well-preserved considering all the use it had apparently seen over the years and not necessarily just from their efforts._

_The mantle above the fireplace showcased various cultural relics and artifacts Brennan had acquired over the years, including a scrimshawed powder horn with Celtic-themed maritime designs that had always fascinated him, a Thai Buddha hand-carved from acacia wood, and the bejeweled silver dagger that he remembered well from the very first night he met her in London. _

_Turning away from the fireplace, he scanned the living room, and felt a warmth in his belly at the sight of the eighty year-old leather chair from Mérida, with its dark brown upholstery secured by heavy brass tacks, wide arms and a generous seat. He'd loved that chair since the moment he saw it in the furniture-maker's workshop in the alleyway off the main church square in Mérida, and had fallen asleep in that chair—his chair—more times than he could count. She still had the same sofa she'd bought a few years earlier in Chicago, a sofa they'd duly christened a few months later when he visited her. Angel grinned as he realized that, while the apartment was a new one, in a new city, it was no less warm and homey than any of the other abodes she'd kept over the many years he'd known her, and he couldn't help but feel as at home in this place as he had anywhere else._

"_So, this is the new place?" he asked. "It's nice. Not as cozy or, well...it doesn't feel as lived-in yet as the place in Chicago, or, well, the house you had in Cheapside, but I'm sure that'll come after time." He stopped for a beat, looked up at her, and flashed a smile of approval. "It's different, but...it's nice. I think I like it."_

_She stopped and put her hands on her hips as she surveyed his look and demeanor. Although they'd promised one another to get together more often, it had been about a year since she'd seen him last, right before she moved from Chicago to D.C. so that she could accept the phenomenal job offer that she'd received from the Jeffersonian Institute. But, after his sire Darla had come to visit, her belly swollen with pregnancy, which fact alone had shocked Brennan, her surprise was compounded when her old friend told her the child was Angel's. After that, in the wake of Darla's death and Connor's birth, Brennan hadn't heard much from Angel for a while. _

_She could see he was dressed much differently than his normal style had been in the years she'd known him since he'd taken to living in California. Taking a look at his outfit, she could tell that the casual cut of the black sportscoat he'd just taken off was deceptive in its simplicity. Having always possessed an eye for fashion, Brennan could spot a jacket that had been tailored versus a coat that had been bought off the rack from the proverbial mile away. The soft black leather of the tie dress Oxfords he wore likewise used simplicity to cloak their expense. Finally, the shiny sateen of the midnight blue button-down shirt added a final touch to the outfit he wore. It took Brennan a moment to realize that the bit of flair the shirt added to his otherwise fairly conservative ensemble resonated with her for a very certain reason. Specifically, it was the only item of clothing that he wore that seemed similar to the way he dressed when a t-shirt and jeans covered by a black leather jacket or duster had been his standard fare._

_Tilting her head at him, she said with an approving smile, "I think I like it."_

"_Huh?" he blinked at her in confusion. "Like what?"_

_Gesturing at him, she answered his question with another question. "New look?"_

_Slightly taken aback by her question, Angel pursed his lips before he shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Ummm, yeah," he nodded at her. "I guess it is, kinda." He sighed and shook his head sadly. _So much for working out, _he thought. _Figures she'd notice the clothes before the muscles. Typical. If that personal trainer who keeps stalking me so much as thinks about asking me what my girlfriend said about my more ripped look, I'm gonna rip his damn balls off.

"_So, don't tell me," Brennan said as she walked past him and back into the living room. "You came all this way, since you know what an excellent and chic sense of style I've always had, to ask me for my advice on whether or not the new tailor you've decided to go to is doing a good job or not?"_

_Watching as she slid past him and resumed the place on the couch where it looked like she'd been sitting earlier, Angel couldn't help but chuckle. "Well," he replied. "No, not quite."_

"_Oh?" she asked with an arched eyebrow as she gestured for him to take a seat in the oversized dark brown reddish leather chair that she knew had always been one of his favorites—ever since he'd fallen in love with the leather work of the skilled Señor Cavantes in his marroquinería in Mérida in 1928, Brennan had custom ordered the chair, and had it shipped back to her apartment in Chicago just for him. "Okay, then. So, I assume this isn't a social call then, right? Because I know you usually like to make those after midnight as opposed to before, so...not that I'm not glad to see you, Angel, because I am. But, you know the next question I've got to ask."_

"_Yeah," he said as he walked towards her. "I do."_

"_Okay," she nodded at him. "So, here goes. Ummm...why are you here?"_

_Angel stared at Brennan for a minute and then answered with a heaviness that had merely been hanging at the edge of his voice since his arrival, but hadn't actually broken through, as he walked to the chair and sat down with a soft grunt. "I came to see you because needed to tell you something," he answered vaguely._

"_Okay," Brennan nodded at him. She paused for a minute, sensing her long-time lover's brooding melancholy, and then knew to ask, "Is this by chance something that you need to tell me that will require one or both of us needing a stiff drink before all is said and done?"_

_Swallowing, he nodded slowly. "Yeah, probably," he said as a faint grin flashed across his pursed lips. It amused him to see that, once again, even after an extended separation, she'd shown that she knew him better than anyone ever had in the two hundred fifty-odd years since he was a boy in Galway. She could sense his moods as well as if they were her own. He felt a murmur in his chest as the fraction of her soul began to hum louder inside of him, asserting its presence as a few moments of silence hung between them._

"_One or both?" Brennan asked with an arched eyebrow._

"_Both," Angel answered instantly. _

_Getting up, Brennan didn't say another word before she went to the dark cherry oak wood sideboard that she used as a bar. Bending over, she reached inside and pulled out a dark green bottle that was covered with a black and gold label. Angel watched her intently, grinning and licking his lips as he noted how snugly the black knit pants clung to the curves of her ass as she retrieved the bottle from her liquor cabinet. He felt a tingling sensation crackle at the base of his spine as he saw her grab the bottle with one hand, retrieve two cut-crystal tumblers from where they sat on a mirrored silver and glass tray on top of the bar, and return to the couch. Sitting back down on her sofa, she set the two glasses and the bottle on the coffee table in front of Angel._

"_Okay," she nodded, once she'd arranged them to her satisfaction. "Do you want to pour or shall I?"_

"_What is it?" Angel asked, studying the dark green bottle that she'd placed in front of him. "It looks like Jameson's, but..." He picked up the bottle and turned it in his hand, inspecting it, stroking his thumb over the label, smirking as he remembered all the times he'd nipped into a pub for a wee dram and ended up in a bar-fight or, on one notable occasion, being thrown into the Tower of London for the weekend. "I'm glad I was able to convert you to Irish whiskey," he chuckled. "Rich, fragrant peaty goodness from the Emerald Isle. When I first moved in with you in Chicago, your liquor cabinet was full of brandy, amaretto, Japanese plum wine, and Kentucky bourbon." He rolled his shoulder in an exaggerated shiver. "Amaretto? Ick."_

"_You act like that's all I ever drank," Brennan said with a small frown. "I like hard cider, too. And, I've had more than my share of red and white wines and beers since grad school."_

"_Yeah," Angel said with a snort. "You and your Stella Artois." He rolled his eyes. "Two years of grad school at Northwestern, and you wouldn't know a good beer if someone spilled it in your lap. Real beer doesn't get served in a 'chalice,' lass. And it doesn't have bubbles. Surely it hasn't been that long that every bit of your Britannic roots have evaporated, huh? Even you know that real beer is served in an imperial pint glass."_

_With a sly grin, he set the bottle down on the coffee table and added, "In any case, maybe this proves there's some hope for you, after all. Either way, I'm just glad that I was able to rectify that wee situation and reintroduce you to the wonderful world of Irish whiskeys. And, o' course, of all of the major distillers, Jameson was always my favorite. That's why you always stocked it, those years in Chicago, wasn't it?"_

"_It is," Brennan said. "Albeit this one in particular is a vintage that's a bit older and definitely a bit more expensive than what you're probably used to drinking." Reaching for the bottle, she popped open the cork and poured several fingers of the warm amber liquid into each glass. "It's a new label that the company just started selling about a year ago. They call it Jameson's 18-Year Old Limited Reserve." She paused once she'd filled each of the glasses with a couple of inches of the aromatic liquid, set the bottle down, and put the cork back into the bottle. Reaching out, she took one of the glasses and then proffered it to him as she said, "I know you've never had a particularly keen thirst for beverages that are lacking in ferrous sulfate content, but when I signed a contract about six months ago with this new literary agent that's agreed to take me on, they asked me what type of alcohol I preferred. Irish whiskey was the first thing that came to mind for some reason..." She smirked and blinked prettily. Angel arched a cocky eyebrow and grinned at hearing her admission. "So the next day, I had six bottles of this show up on my doorstep. I've, well...I've been saving it to share with you ever since."_

"_Seriously?" he asked, his voice peaking in surprise. "I mean, you've been saving it for me? To drink with me?" He smiled and rolled his fingertips together, itching to reach his hand over to touch hers. "That's really nice, Bren. This is the good stuff, wow." Accepting the glass from her, he murmured approvingly. "Mmm..." _

_Angel raised the glass to his nose and took a whiff. His nostrils flared and his sinuses opened wide as the sharp, earthy vapor hit his nose. Though he favored Jameson's in more recent times, as a young man, he drank his fair share of Bushmills and even more often, locally- (and typically, illegally-) distilled single-malt whiskeys, the names of which had long since been forgotten. The untaxed local brews varied wildly in taste, even comparing two batches from a single distiller's casks, but after the third or fourth drink on any given night, Liam—Angel's younger, human self—really wasn't letting the peaty liquor linger long on his tongue. He winced a bit as he thought of how many ounces of fine western Irish whiskey had been spilled on the floor when a rowdy night of drinking turned rough. _

_He blinked away the thought as he smiled at the way the soft light of Brennan's living room shone through the amber liquor in his glass. Some of the moodiness that had earlier clouded Angel's face seemed to dissipate as he asked, "Literary agent? What's that all about?"_

_Brennan flushed a bit and then answered, "Well, I've...I've sold a novel. I don't know if it'll do well once they publish it, but my agent seems to think it's got the makings of a good book."_

"_You wrote a book?" Angel asked her, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Why'd you write a book? I mean, it's cool you did, but, uhhh..." He hesitated, glancing over at the bookshelf for some reason, then back to her. "You've been around a long time, and you're just now getting around to writing a book? Don't tell me you're going all David Copperfield on me and decided to write your memoirs or something, huh?" _

_Brennan shrugged as she slightly shook her head, "No, they aren't my memoirs." She paused, tilting her head as she explained, "I guess I did it, in part, to pass the time," she said. "You know, when the work at at the lab left me with some discretionary time." She swirled the whiskey in her glass, then brought it up to her mouth as she inhaled its vapors. "It's not like I was in a relationship," she said evenly, holding the glass in front of her face as she spoke. "You were in California, and...I was all by myself...well, the writing? It helped to provide a welcome distraction and did seem to make the passage of time more bearable._

_An awkward silence hung between them as Angel fidgeted, twisting his glass in lazy circles against his thigh. He sighed, chewing on his lip, furtively looking up at her, then looking away. After a few moments, he looked up and asked, "What's it about? Your book, I mean." He paused, and then some of the earlier moodiness that he'd displayed returned as he asked, "You said it's not, umm...it's not about vampires and witches...right?" His arched eyebrows and creased forehead left no doubt as to his opinion of the supernatural as a possible subject for any works of fiction she might've been inspired to write. "I mean, there's no shortage of vampire novels out there and—"_

"_No," she replied, shaking her head with a laugh. "Nothing so...extraordinary, I'm afraid. It's just a simple crime drama/mystery about a serial killer that's brought to justice by the efforts of a forensic anthropologist."_

"_A forensic anthropologist, huh?" he snickered as he flashed her a look as a bit of teasing sarcasm came into his voice. "I bet you had to do a lot of research to be able to feel comfortable writing about that type of persona, huh?"_

"_Actually, no," Brennan answered, either choosing to ignore his snicker or being deliberately obtuse about his comment as she responded. "I find taking on Dr. Reich's mindset to be quite easy. She's a logical, if somewhat over passionate, individual who turns to the logic and reason of science for comfort. She's the best at what she does and helps to improve the world in which she lives by using the unique skill set she possesses." _

"_Well," Angel said, gazing into his unsipped whiskey as a wistful pout flashed across his lips. "You've always been the best at whatever you tried to do. And, you know, these last hundred-odd years, as you've been getting into that archaeology and the anthropology stuff, it's been cool to see you excited about something, you know, outside of yourself." _

_Brennan shot him a look, opened her mouth to say something, and then promptly swallowed the sharp remark when Angel quickly assured her he wasn't being snide._

"_Wait," he said, realizing what he said had come out sounding worse than he'd intended. "What I mean is—I wasn't trying to suggest you were selfish or anything." He arched an expectant eyebrow as he waited for some indication that she wasn't, in fact, offended. "That is, what I mean is, I really dig the idea that you can take all that, you know, and channel it into something that benefits the wider world in a really tangible way. I mean, I've spent years fighting against the darkness in the world, and it's neat to see you be able to do the same thing." He shrugged a little and laughed. "Except, well, you get to do it with your brain, as opposed to me using my thick skull and hard fists."_

_She tilted her head as she considered his words and then told him, "Yes, well, I wouldn't quite put it in those words, but very well."_

"_But you want to get out there?" he asked. "I mean, really join the fight?"_

"_Well," she answered after a moment of hesitation. "It's not like I haven't considered the possibility long before now. I mean, if there's one person who's seen how much evil exists in this world, it's me, right? So, in my own time and in my own way, if I can figure out a way to do it realistically, then yes. I think it would be an appropriate use of my talents, don't you?"_

"_Well, yeah," he said. "You're a gifted woman, Bren. I can't think of a better thing for you to do with your life. I think that's great."_

_Angel fell silent, and for a minute, he found himself staring again into his whiskey as he considered her earlier words. "You find comfort in logic and reason, don't you?" he asked. "I mean, that's not just the character in your book, is it?" A wave of guilt washed over him as he wondered how much of her reliance on logic and reason was because his possession of a third of her soul, her _thumetikon_, left her with only her _logistikon _(logic and reason) and _epithumetikon _(emotions, appetites and passion). Logic and reason, he knew, was the only rudder she had to navigate the seas of emotional tumult. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to..." His voice trailed off as he struggled for words. _

_His eyes narrowed his eyes as he watched her cheeks flush slightly, then—feeling the mood between them grow heavy with each passing second—he raised his eyebrows and said, "I hope you don't write all of Dr. Brainy's dialogue to sound like that, you know, with all the long sentences and fifty-cent words. Most of the time I get the gist of what you're saying, but—maybe you can dial it back a little so the average reader can figure out what you're saying without having to consult Webster's every third word."_

_Looking at him, Brennan wasn't quite certain how to respond. After a beat of silence, she swallowed once, and then almost continued as if he hadn't said anything at all. _

"_To be honest," she said, "what's most perplexing to me, and a problem I'm not quite certain how to rectify—is the fact that my editor feels that a key component is missing in the first draft she read. Obviously, she liked the premise and the main character well enough considering the fact that I've signed a contract with her publishing house, but she still thinks that the story would be more balanced if I offset the involved scientific lingo I've included in the story—or what I think my editor, quite unfairly I might add, called 'technical jargon'—with a type of outside character that serves as a reason for Dr. Reichs to explain what she's said in laymen's terms. In the notes she gave me, my editor said the audience will be able to relate to such a character more easily and that it would make the novel stronger since she believes that every story needs 'an everyman.'" _

_Pausing, Brennan said with a sigh, "I've been trying for two weeks to figure out what to do, and I must admit that it's proven to be more of a substantial task that I'd originally envisioned it to be. In fact, I'm still struggling with how to handle that request. Honestly, I don't even know where to start."_

_Angel considered her words and then nodded. "Well, okay," he said. "So you've got a mental block?"_

"_Of sorts," Brennan told him, although she was loathe to admit it._

"_Okay," he repeated. After a moment of additional thought, he said, "So for what it's worth, well...I mean, maybe part of the reason what she wants you to do is giving you such a hard time is because you really don't see the need for it. Maybe if you can find some way to really understand why it's necessary, then you'll have a good reason to do it and that will allow that überbrain of yours to let you figure out what you need to do to solve the problem."_

_Giving him a look that made it clear she didn't understand what he was trying to tell her, she responded, "I'm not quite certain what you mean."_

"_What I mean is," Angel said. "You've gotta remember that not everyone has the same smarts you do. So tossing in an average joe...well, it's a necessary evil if you want people to read your stuff. So I think you're editor's onto something. You just need to figure out a way to dig in and then I bet ya the rest will come." He paused, held his tongue between his lips as the tip of it darted outside as he considered the point, and then said, "It should be a guy."_

"_Hmmm?" Brennan asked, even more confused by his statement when she cocked an eyebrow at his statement. "What, or rather whom, should be a guy?"_

"_Your everyman," he said, his confidence building as he explained the idea that had come to him. "It should be a guy." _

"_Why?" she asked with her eyebrow further arching._

"_Well, the main character is a female, right?" Angel asked. He then flashed her a toothy grin as he added, "A beautiful, brilliant, and super-sexy scientist, right?"_

"_I wouldn't say that her looks or sexual peccadilloes are relevant to the story, Angel," Brennan said with a slight frown. "The story is about how science can be used to catch criminals."_

"_Come on, Bren," Angel said with an exasperated roll of his eyes. "Sex sells, remember? And since we both need to cut the bullshit and just admit this Kathy-chick is you, you know she's a sexy genius, right? So deal."_

"_I'm not Dr. Reichs, and she isn't me," Brennan insisted, pouting her bottom lip in a way that told Angel that she was being stubborn just because she could be. "It's a fictional story, Angel."_

"_Right," he said with a roll of his eyes. "So anyway, your genius scientist—the one that's über-fucking sexy?" He shot her a look and dared her to contradict him with a wag of his eyebrows. When she said nothing, he continued with a grin, "Well, if her job is to catch criminals using science, she needs an everyday average joe who the non-eggheads can relate to, and..." His voice trailed off as he narrowed his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. He snapped his fingers, turned to her and said, "Hey, do you remember those _Black Mask _detective magazines I always got such a kick out of when we were in Chicago?"_

_Caught slightly off guard by his apparently random question, it took Brennan a moment to answer his question. Eventually, was fairly certain she knew what he was talking about and nodded. "The modern dime novels that had the private investigator solving crimes in a noir setting?" she asked. _

_Angel nodded. "Yeah," he said with a grin. "God, I loved those." _

"_Then, yes," she said with a slight eye roll. "I remember."_

"_What you needl" he pointed at her with his index finger," is one of those type of guys for your story. A sexy, wisecracking guy who can balance your female lead. Tall, dark, and handsome type, you know. Tough as nails, street-smart, and cunning even though he's not an intellectual or has booksmarts like she does. And likeable, you know, even if he's a bit of a tough nut to crack. Easy to get to know, but takes a bit to get to know him well. He'd have good hair, too. And a great smile. Maybe he can be a P.I.—" He suddenly stopped, frowning a bit when he recalled his own past business' vague association as a private investigations firm. Shaking his head, he quickly amended, "You know what? Scratch that. P.I.'s—well, no. Nevermind that bit. That won't work at all." He stopped and then said, "You know what would though? A cop. He should be a flatfoot. A cop would work great. See, he can be a foil for her in more ways than one...on the job, right? 'Cause he sees the world through a different sort of lens than she does. She's a logical type, seeing the world through the prism of reason—like some people we know." Angel winked at Brennan as she shot him another look, then shrugged good naturedly, and continued. "Ultimately, it's more than just different occupations, though. He's got a different mentality than she does. He's gotta be more of a shoots-from-the-hip, goes-with-his-gut kind of guy. These two are like 'The Odd Couple.' Night and day in their personalities and belief systems, right? They're polar opposites in everything. Fire and ice, you know, but somehow, for whatever reason, they click and the magic they make—well, it works, you know? It doesn't make any sense, least of all to them, but it's the perfect set up. They solve crimes during the day and, then, at night..." He paused, giving her a bit of a lecherous grin. "Well, at night—let's just say the two of them have other ways to spend their time that shows how and why fire can melt ice and ice can be red hot...scorching even."_

_Brennan considered Angel's suggestion and then smiled as she said, "I suppose you want me to name him Sam Spade or some other nominative derivative of one of your favorite literary characters, hmmm?"_

"_Naaaww," Angel laughed. "As long as you don't give him a wussy name like...well, like Blaine or Julian or Andy, I think you'll be okay. He's gotta be a kicking-ass-and-taking-names type of guy and nobody's gonna believe he's a real cop like that if you call him Andy."_

_Smiling at him, Brennan lifted her glass towards him, "I'll think about it." She then thought better of it, lowered her glass, and squinted her eyes at him. "So," she said, "if I do decide to go with this idea of yours, and my book actually sells, does that mean you're going to expect some of royalty arrangement with residuals?"_

_He sat back in his chair, cocked his head to the side and smiled. "I don't need any money," he said. "But I'm willing to accept payment in kind, you know. You can pay me back in...other ways."_

_She shot him a sexy grin. "Other ways? Oh really?"_

"_Yeah," he said, giving her a cocky smirk. "I think that might work. Don't you?"_

"_I'm not sure what you could possibly be referring to," she deadpanned, refusing to let him have this particular point._

_Angel narrowed his eyes and snickered. "Yes, you do, lass," he said. "Come on, now. Between you and me, we got over the subtle part a long time ago, aye? Don't be coy."_

"_Hmmpph," Brennan replied noncommittally as she bit back a laugh. Glancing down at her glass of whiskey, she said, "Well, for now...maybe just a toast?"_

"_To what?" Angel asked as he swirled the contents of the glass she'd given him in his hand._

_Shaking her head, Brennan replied, "I don't know." She paused, hesitating almost as if she was about to say one thing, and then stopped herself when she thought better of it. She took another minute before she looked away, shook her head, and then raised her glance back to meet his questioning stare._

"_What is it?" he asked her._

"_Nothing," Brennan answered. "It's just that what I do know is this stuff is too good not to make a toast before we down it even if we're just doing it not to enjoy the drink but, as it were, to strengthen our resolve for whatever it is that you've got to tell me—" She paused, pursing her lips before she raised her glass and asked, "So, maybe just to...because?"_

_Angel studied her for a minute as he heard her hesitation. He saw the slight tension in her jaw and temple, and as he thought of what he needed to tell her, he felt a twinge in his neck that worked its way down and became a tightness in his back and shoulders. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, trying to hold off the wave of negative emotions he felt lapping at his mood. He bit down on the inside of his lip as he tried to center his thoughts, then nodded as he lifted his glass towards hers. "Just to because," he said._

"_Just to because," she repeated, using her glass to gesture towards him before she tilted her head back and downed the contents of the tumbler in one gulp. _

_The strong Irish whiskey felt like a smooth lava flow down the back of her throat, and her eyes watered slightly as she swallowed the remnants of the shot before she set the empty glass down on the coffee table. Letting out a deep breath, Brennan smacked her lips a couple of times, not really paying attention to Angel's response to downing the liquor. _

_She then nodded at him and said, "Okay. That was...quite smooth. And, I think if we have a few more of those, you could probably get me to the point that my inhibitions would be lowered that you could get me to do just about anything you want—"_

"_Hmmm," he murmured as he swallowed his first large sip of the whiskey, which he found surprisingly smooth. He held the glass up and apprised it for a moment, then brought it back to his lips and threw back the last of its contents in a single gulp, catching an errant drop of the fine Irish spirit with his tongue as he set his glass on the table. "I'll keep that in mind for later. There are a few things I've been thinking of asking you about and—"_

_She attempted to avoid rolling her eyes at him and cut him off. "Be that as it may, I think I'm ready now. So, go ahead. Say what you need to say." Lifting her steel blue eyes to meet his, she said, "Tell me why you came here tonight."_

_Angel pressed his lips together in a firm line when he felt the taste of bile bubble up in his throat as he knew he had to come clean with her, but he dreaded how she would react. The warm feeling he'd had in his belly since hearing her talk about her novel had given way to a sourness and a clenching as he feared that all of the pleasure he'd felt just being in her presence again might shatter in an instant as soon as he gave his confession. Never one for prayer, he nonetheless paused, went against his nature, and hoped for the best. He gazed for a couple of moments into her deep blue eyes, then slowly nodded in self-affirmation. _

"_Right," he said with a heavy sigh. "Okay." He hesitated for a few seconds before he suddenly reached for the Jameson's bottle. He used his mouth to pop off the cork, he spit it out in the direction of the coffee table, and then proceeded to take several long draughts. After he'd finished swigging from the bottle, he wrapped his fingers around the bottle's neck, but lowered it as he lifted his brown eyes to meet Brennan's curious ones, he said, "I'm shutting down Angel Investigations." As soon as the words left his mouth, he would have sworn what he'd really said was, 'I'm giving in. I've got my reasons, but I'm giving in.'_

_Whatever Brennan had expected him to say, it wasn't that. Her face took on a thoughtful look before she slowly nodded at him and said, "Okay."_

"_And for right now I'm moving out of the Hyperion," Angel added. Silently, he thought, _I'm not selling out even if it feels like it. _He swallowed and added mentally, _Right?

_Still unruffled, Brennan again nodded, "Right."_

"_And I've taken a new job—with Wolfram and Hart," Angel said. The words came very quickly, almost as if by saying them in such a way he was ripping off a bandaid as quickly as he could. "They made me an offer, and, after a lot of soul-searching—so to speak—I've decided to take it. I'm...well, I'm taking over as CEO of their Los Angeles branch." He felt a clenching in his gut as he brought his eyes to meet hers. _Tell me I'm a worthless son of a bitch sellout, _he dared her. _Go ahead. Do it. I know you want to, that you're going to, and I don't blame you. I deserve it. Because it sure fucking feels like I sold my soul to the Devil. _He leaned his head back and shook his head. _Again_, he added silently._

_He stared at her with expectation and gravity in his deep brown eyes, and as he looked at Brennan, it seemed to her that he appeared to be bracing himself for some type of pain inducing response. As Angel sat there, his eyebrows aloft, his brow deeply creased in tense expectation. and his mouth gaping open as he readied himself for what he assumed would be her negative response, Brennan became more and more confused by his body language._

_Eventually, after a couple of minutes of staring at one another, Brennan could only ask by way of prompting, "Okay. So that means...you're moving further downtown?"_

_This time, whatever reaction Brennan had expected, the one she received from Angel was not the one she'd been anticipating._

_Angel narrowed his eyes at her surprisingly banal response, then shrugged, and said, "Well, yeah. But, ummm, that's not...wait, that's all you have to say? It'll be a shorter commute for us when you fly into LAX, and I pick you up?" He paused, staring at her._

Really? _he thought as his brow furrowed hard over his eyes. _Damn, woman, I just fucking told you I took a job as the grand poobah of the L.A. office of the sleaziest and most evil law firm in the known universe, and all you can think about is how it's a more convenient location for picking you up from the goddamn airport? What the fuck?

_He sighed then, with an edge of the repressed frustration in his voice that he'd been holding back for hours in anticipation of what he'd assumed would be her rejection of him, said, "Really, Bren?"_

"_Yes," she nodded, as she stared at him innocently, still confused as to why he was reacting the way he was. "Was there something else that you were expecting or required me to say?"_

_Reaching again for the whiskey bottle, Angel poured a couple of ounces into his glass, tipped the bottle in her direction to offer her a refill, and once he'd refilled her glass, sighed as he set the bottle aside. "Well," he began. "The truth is that I sorta figured you'd see fit to bust my balls at least a little bit about the whole thing."_

"_Why?" Brennan asked, staring him with a blank look on her face. "I don't understand. Why would you expect me to castigate you simply because you've chosen to vary your current place of employment?"_

_Angel shrugged and sighed. _Maybe because everyone else seems all too ready to treat me like a lying, thieving, baby-killing sack of shit because of it? _he thought. _Well, maybe not everyone, _he told himself, _but the only other person I thought to tell. And what a fucking mistake that was—like every other fucking thing always has been with her. _He raised the glass to his lips and took a long sip._

"_Well," he shrugged. "I dunno. I just thought you might have something to say about me crossing over to the dark side and going to work for the world's premier provider of legal and other professional services for a dizzying range of evil and demonic clients." Angel reached up and scratched his head as he felt the roiling sensation in his belly finally settle into a mild simmer. _Maybe I was right after all, _he thought. _Wrong about how she'd react, but right in taking the job. _ He looked up at her with hopeful eyes. "But, uhh, I guess that's not a big deal for you, after all?"_

"_No," she said with a small shake of her head. "It's not. At least, I don't think—I mean..." She paused and then asked, "Should it be?"_

_Raising his glass to his mouth again and letting the whiskey's spicy vapors fill his nostrils, Angel hesitated, glancing up to meet her eyes before looking away. His thoughts flitted back to the night she found him in Chicago, and how he'd led her on a chase through the cold, wind-blown streets, hoping to throw her off his trail because he knew with complete certainty that she wouldn't have wanted him the way he was. _I was wrong then, _he reminded himself. _She trusts me. She trusts me, right? She knows me, sometimes better than I even think I know myself, and she still trusts me. _A faint smile curved his lips as he suddenly felt a bit foolish. "No," he said. "It shouldn't because you know the kind of man I am, I guess." He winced at hearing the prevarication in his own words. _

_Not noticing his response, she merely replied, "I do, Angel. I know you're a good man. A very good man. I just wish that you'd believe that a bit more sometimes."_

"_I-I...ummm," he stammered. "Well, it's just that, with running that little boutique sideshow over there in the Hyperion, all I could do was prune around the edges, you know. Try to keep the nastiness from getting too outta hand. But, if I can...well..." His voice trailed off as he struggled for words. Shifting his hips against the cushion of the leather chair that he sat on, he sighed before he continued. "This way...I can infiltrate the fortress, if that makes any sense. I mean, it's better than that even, because I get to command the fortress, at some level. I mean, I'll have the Senior Partners to answer to, but I...it seems I'll have a lot of latitude in how I can operate there, and they'll just keep me a hemmed in a bit on the edges. But, I'll be able to...that is, I think I can do more good inside the machine than continuing to fight it the way I have. See, if I can keep some of the bad shit from happening, or tamp it down early on, that's another way to hold back the forces of evil, right? More strategic, less tactical. I mean, I'm still gonna go out and do what I've always done, but, this way, I can do more—more good. If I can do that, well, then the compromises I have to make to make that happen are worth it in the end, right?" He shrugged. "I think it is, so that's what I'm gonna do. I accepted the offer. I decided. I'm gonna do it."_

_Brennan watched as Angel attempted to explain what she knew he felt was an important situation to her. After a minute, she stood up and moved over closer to his chair. Perching herself on the leather chair's wide arm, she reached over and tucked an almost nonexistent errant hair behind his ear._

_He turned his head to the side and pressed his cheek into her hand, wanting to feel her warm touch even more firmly. He reached his hand up and closed his fingers around her smaller, more slender fingers. "Bren," he whispered, unsure at that moment what else he wanted to say to her. "I-I...you see, I..." _

"_Angel," she began. "You don't...look, I'm not sure why you felt you needed to come here to tell me this, but you don't need to explain your actions to me. It's not necessary."_

"_It's not?" he asked, lifting his eyes to meet hers. _See? _he told himself. _You stupid schmuck. She trusts you. She believes in you. Same way she always has. Dunno why, but she does and yet you kept doubting her. Dumbass._ "But, Bren, how can you say that?"_

"_Because it's true," she replied simply. "I don't know why I need to say this, but okay, it's not a big deal. If you need to hear it, and for some reason I'm not quite certain about, I think you do, then I can say it."_

"_Say what?" he questioned her with a still hesitant look crossing his handsome face._

"_Say that I know you, and I know you're a good man, Angel," she said to him with a nod. "I trust you, Angel, and you don't need to explain yourself to me. Whatever you want to do, or however you want to do it, I know you've got to have your reasons for doing it, so it's fine by me."_

_He looked at her for a long minute. There was a faintly pinched quality to her expression, one that spoke of concern, and not the distrust or hesitation or even skepticism he'd seen in other familiar faces in the foregoing weeks. It made a type of warmth blossom in his chest as he thought about what it meant to him. Finally, he nodded to himself and then, after a beat, told her sincerely, "Thanks."_

"_For what?" she asked him._

_He let out a curt laugh, then shook his head. "I don't think I knew just until this very minute how much I needed to hear something like that," he told her. "I-I...I, ummm, I guess I needed a little boost of confidence." _

_He was quiet for a minute as his thoughts went to the mess that his life had turned into in recent months. Images of Cordelia, Connor, Jasmine, and others swirled in his mind before a flash of anger caused him to focus on the familiar image of an oval face with piercing green eyes framed by dirty blonde hair. _

"_My life..." His voice trailed off for a minute as he downed what was left in his glass and then reached for the whiskey bottle again. Lifting the dark green bottle to him lips, he squinched his eyes together to keep them from watering from the pungent aroma of the Irish whiskey. He then took several long drinks from it before he set the bottle back down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "My life," he repeated. "Has been substantially fucked up in recent months..." He paused for a beat as she gave him a questioning stare. Quickly, he amended, "I mean, even more than it normally is."_

_Brennan was quiet for a minute and then asked, "And, you taking this job with Wolfram and Hart...will that help to improve your situation?"_

_The question again caught Angel off guard. The only other person he'd told about his decision had never deigned to ask him how he felt about the change, or how it would affect him personally. Brennan, however, cared less about the broader cosmic consequences of his decision—if she cared about them at all—and her question both surprised him and set her apart. _She's a constant surprise, _he thought privately. _And for some reason, that, too seems to surprise me, even after all these years. God, I don't know why I doubt her. She's a fucking incredible woman in so many damn ways. Everytime I think that I've got 'em all figured out, she just comes up with a whole new slew of them._ He leveled a pensive stare at her and then slowly nodded, "Yeah. I think it will."_

"_Then, I'm glad you'll have the opportunity to take advantage of, Angel," she said. "It seems...well, it seems like this was a chance that was too good to pass up that manifested itself at exactly the opportune moment for you."_

"_I know," he told her, his voice increasing as he suddenly got up out of the chair and began pacing in front of her. "Most of the crew...they understand that. Wesley and Gunn and Fred...they're all on board with it. The move, I mean. It took a bit of doing, but eventually, in the end, they all agreed. But, the others—"_

_Feeling a familiar tightness in her throat, Brennan couldn't help herself as her voice softened when she asked, "Like Cordelia?"_

_At the sound of her name, Angel suddenly stopped. His features hardened as his jaw tensed and he said, "Cordy...she's well..." _

_His voice trailed off as he looked away. He was silent for a minute, and Brennan was almost afraid of what he was going to say when he finally spoke again. _

"_Things between me and Cordy, Bren? They haven't been the same in a long time. Not since...well, probably long before it happened, but well—it's a long story, but her and I...it just wasn't going to work. I wanted to make it work, somehow, you know for...well, just to give my life some stability, I guess." _

_He frowned as he thought about his son, and how—despite the shock of his very existence and the trauma by which he'd come into the world—he'd always tried to do the right thing for him. He felt his shoulders tighten as he silently reminded himself not to speak of his son to her because no one but he himself was supposed to have any memory of who Connor was. _

"_It's just...well," he stammered. "When things got kinda crazy back there in L.A., and I needed a hand, Cordy was there. We'd known each other a long time—I mean, not as long as I've known you, but..." He sighed. "She'd become a friend over the years, you know, and I guess—and well, I'm an idiot who has a stupid heart which isn't good for much anymore other than getting me in trouble. Cordy was a familiar, friendly face, someone who'd stepped in, and really been there for me when..." He paused for a moment as he realized exactly how much of a jerk he sounded like. "And she was...I dunno...comfortable, I guess, and so I guess I got kind of carried away by the feelings because when I was with her in the moment, it felt so fucking real, Bren." He rolled his eyes at his own foolishness and turned away with a heavy sigh. "See," he said. "I thought...well, I was an idiot, as usual, and...I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, really. It doesn't matter, anyway. Any delusions I had about being able to get over what had happened between us to try and make things work ended when I...I-I walked in and found her in bed with Connor a few months ago—"_

_He stopped, wincing when he realized the taboo name that had unwittingly tumbled from his lips. Swallowing heavily, he looked up, expecting to see confusion in her eyes as he started to explain, "Connor...well, it's kinda a long story, but he's this guy—"_

"_Angel," Brennan said quietly, standing up before she walked over to him. "Please don't."_

"_What?" he asked her, his voice taking on a quiet edge as he spoke the single word._

"_Don't make excuses for him," Brennan said. "I understand that you love him and he's your son, so I know why you might feel some inclination to make allowances for him that you wouldn't normally extend to other people, but please don't. For him to do something like that, particularly when he has to have known how you felt about her, well—"_

"_Wait," Angel said, his head snapping up as he focused his intent brown eyes on her pale blue ones. "You know...who...you know who Connor is?"_

_Slowly, Brennan nodded her head. "Yes, of course," she answered. "He's your son—"_

"_Fuck," Angel suddenly growled as he turned around and reached into the pocket of his suit trousers. "They promised me. They fucking promised me that no one but me would remember him. Son of a bitch, I can't believe it." He grunted and yanked his phone out of his pocket, but for a moment simply stood there in an aggressive stance, his hands propped firmly on his hips as he held his flip-phone against his palm in one hand. He shook his head, muttering under his breath as he walked towards her window. "Fucking assholes," he spat as he leaned close to the window. "Do they really think I'm that fucking stupid? Did they think they can pull one over on me? I'm gonna fucking tear that goddamn office apart when I get back brick by fucking brick because, if they think they can double cross me, they've got another fucking thing coming."_

_Angel stopped pacing and began to pound on the cell phone's dialpad with furious abandon. He continued to mutter all the while, but when he didn't get the call to connect like he wanted to, he growled in frustration. Suddenly, his face contorted in anger as he wrapped his fingers tightly around the cell phone, drew back his arm, and let out a loud yell as he heaved the cell phone as hard as he could against the far wall of her living room. The slim flip-phone hit the wall with a loud _crack _and fell to the floor in multiple pieces._

"_Fucking piece of shit!" he snarled, not even giving the phone a second glance. "Goddamn it!"_

_At last, Brennan stood up and tilted her head at him as she watched his face tense, his jaw tightening and relaxing as he ruminated in his usual brooding, angry way. She waited a minute, hoping his anger would abate, before she finally asked, "Do I want to ask what this is all about?"_

"_Fuck no," he told her. Then, he suddenly resumed his pacing, and reprised his muttering. "I'm so fucking sick of this. Sick of it. I'm over it. I mean it. I'm so fucking over getting used and taken advantage of and everyone thinking that it's okay, because hey, I'll find some way to deal because that's what I've always done. Well, I'm tired of fucking dealing. I'm so fucking tired of it, I can't even tell you. It's not alright, it's not okay, and I'm fucking done!" He paused, anger flashing in his eyes as he pointed at her and then explained, "You want to know why I'm so fucking pissed right now I'd like to tear out a few goddamn throats just to get things started?"_

_As unfazed by his anger as ever, Brennan simply shrugged as she said, "Sure." _

_The evenness of her response should've soothed him, but his anger had peaked so rapidly and burned so hotly that her calmness infuriated him further._

"_Those double-crossing motherfuckers!" he shouted. "You aren't supposed to remember that I have a son, let alone that his name is Connor." he muttered. "That was a part of the deal I made with Wolfram and Hart when I agreed to take their job offer. But if you fucking can remember my fucking son, then that means they didn't keep up their part of the fucking deal, and—ughh! You have no idea how fucking angry that makes me, Bren."_

_She held his angry gaze for a minute and then said, "You're right."_

"_Goddamn it, I fucking know that," he growled at her. "I know, I'm right."_

"_But, stop for just a moment, Angel," she suggested calmly._

"_Why?" Angel snapped. "Those fuckers dicked me over, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna find some way to fuck them back and fuck them back hard."_

"_You know," Brennan said, ignoring his latest rant. "If I remember something that the deal you made when you agreed to take over the law office that I shouldn't, then, yes, I must concede the point that it's a definite possibility that the deal you made with Wolfram and Hart has been compromised for some reason."_

_He snorted and tapped his foot impatiently as he felt every muscle in his body twitching with angry energy. "Fucking assholes—"_

"_But," she continued, as if she was lecturing to some of her students as she worked the problem out loud. "It's also possible that ...well, I take it as a part of your agreement with them that your memory of Connor was to be left unaltered?"_

_This time, her question stopped the angry tirade he was ready to let loose as he thought about how to answer her question. "Yeah," he finally conceded, recalling how he wanted to remember his son, because he couldn't bear the thought that a child of his body, conceived as he was under extraordinary circumstances, would be forgotten by everyone including his own father, his name and face vanishing from memory as if he'd never even existed. For all the lives he'd extinguished over the years, and all the destruction he'd wrought in the century and a half he raged as Angelus, the very thought of forgetting his child—the only life he'd ever created—had made Angel physically ill and so he'd wanted to keep those memories even if it cut him as badly as it did in remembering the good with the bad. "It was."_

"_Well, then perhaps, while it is possible that my ability to remember your son is due to Wolfram and Hart's failure to uphold their end of the bargain they made with you for some reason, it's also possible, Angel, that our unique...well, connection...might have also kept me from losing my memories," Brennan postulated._

_Angel stopped and raked his hand through his hair. "What?" he said. "Are you saying that for some reason, you're too closely linked to me to get your memories of Connor zapped like you were supposed to?" He scratched his scalp distractedly, not because it itched, but because somehow it enabled him to bind a tiny fragment of the nervous, furious energy that coursed through his sinews. As he leaned his weight onto one hip, his other leg shook and he tucked his thumb under his belt, drumming his fingers anxiously on his hip. "It doesn't make any sense," he muttered. "It doesn't make any fucking sense."_

"_It's possible," she said. "Logic dictates that—"_

"_You know what, Bren," Angel suddenly said, letting out a loud sigh of exasperation. "I'm sorry. But with the day I've had...hell, with the year I've had, but you're gonna have to forgive me because I don't give two flying fucks about what logic says about the goddamn situation right now. I'm fucking pissed off, and that's emotion, not logic. So excuse me, but fuck logic."_

_Brennan looked at Angel, and then, taking a step towards him as she tried to maintain her calm, said, "Given the situation as you've described it to me, your feelings of anger and frustration are understandable. But, I really think if we can just reason this out, it might help us achieve some type of answer that, in turn, will allow you to figure out what the most appropriate course of action to follow would be. Now, I know that while you do possess a fair bit of knowledge about this kind of thing, I'm also very aware that you aren't necessarily as familiar with how some of the more intricate magic and spells work. Perhaps—"_

"_Don't fucking patronize me," he spat, suddenly lifting up his smoldering gaze to meet hers. "I've fucking had enough of people fucking thinking they know what they think I can fucking handle, or what I can fucking be trusted with, or what they fucking think I am capable of fucking understanding." _

_Brennan opened her mouth to say something, but never really had the chance when Angel never gave her the chance to get another word in edgewise._

"_You know what?" he told her, punctuating his words with a sharp jab of his index finger. "Okay, so I never fucking went to college. Alright? I cost my father more earnings than he made in an entire shipping season on fucking tutors he hired to try to get me to learn more than being able to read and write and do some basic figures. So I never fucking learned all my Greek and Latin, and I never went and got all that fancy book learning that everybody else did. I admit it. I was a fuck up. I screwed up because I didn't take the chance I had back then. But you know what? Big fucking deal. Because all that book learning shit, Bren? None of that makes me a goddamn simpleton. I'm not a fucking idiot. I've spent a lotta fucking time learning it all...what do they call it? Immersion method. That's it. I fucking learned a lotta shit by immersion method, alright? I'm not some dumb fucking, bloodsucking mick that just fell off the fucking turnip truck. Alright?" He stopped, looked away at a far point on the opposite wall, and then snapped his eyes back to meet hers. "I mean, come on, Bren. What the fuck? Why does everybody wanna sell me short? Why does everybody think I'm an idiot? Like I-I can't...like I'm just too dumb to be fucking trusted. Fuck. So, lemme guess—you're gonna tell me I need to be careful not to get taken advantage of by the big ole bad and scaries at Wolfram and Hart?"_

_Knowing that it was very important that she remain calm given how upset he was, Brennan gritted her teeth slightly. Pushing any response that wasn't rational and logical deep down and as far into the pit of her stomach, Brennan considered his words and then answered, "I think it would be naive of you not to consider that possibility, given the fact that you do possess a certain optimistic idealism that can color your outlook on things, but overall...as you say, you're not an idiot. Even if Wolfram and Hart did try to take advantage of you, I'm sure you'd find a way to handle to situation."_

_Angel frowned, his dark brows knitting low and hard over his eyes as he fumed. "I-I...you know, I figured you'd piss all over my decision for all kinds of good, well-reasoned, logicky-ass reasons, or else..." His words trailed off again as he gritted his teeth and shook his head. "I'd expected more, you know, after all the time we'd spent together, battling the shit side-by-side in Sunnydale. I'd really fucking expected, you know, after everything, that she'd have given me just a tiny ass little fucking morsel of credit for once, you know, for a fucking change—but serves me fucking right to overestimate her. She fucking said she didn't trust me. After all of it. After everything. She...she doesn't trust me. I've never done anything to hurt her, to betray her. But she doesn't trust me. Fuck her. And fuck me. I guess I'm a fucking idiot, after all." He jutted his lower jaw forward as he looked up, his field of vision narrowed by his furrowed brow. "So, go ahead. Tell me you don't trust me. Let's make it a fucking unanimous panel decision, huh?"_

_Brennan stared at him for a long minute, struggling to understand what he'd just said to her, and for that moment, she was lost. However, when she realized that he wasn't talking about her, she rapidly came to the conclusion that there could be only one other woman of whom he was speaking—and it wasn't Cordelia. He face hardened and her nostrils started to flare slightly before she said, "I know you did not just equate me with a certain female individual from your past with whom you've had a turbulent romantic history in recent years." She stopped, then tilted her head as she added, "Because, I'm not certain where or when, but somehow we just went from discussing Cordelia and your son and Wolfram and Hart to something else, didn't we? Because, I know for a goddamn fact, Angel, that whatever your feelings have been for Cordelia, you've never been so adversely affected by her. Ergo, from process of elimination, since Darla's dead, that only leaves one person whom could elicit such a response from you since I know it's not Cordelia whom you're obviously talking about."_

"_What do you mean 'adversely affected'?" he huffed. "Adversely fucking affected? For fuck's sake, Bren. Yeah, I'd say I was adversely fucking affected by Cordy. I mean, shit, how can you not say I was adversely fucking affected by what she did to me?" Angel's jaw stiffened, drawing his muscles tight over his scalp and temple as his hands curled into fists so hard that his fingernails dug into his palms. "I mean, Jesus. She made me want to rip my own son's balls off with my bare fucking hands and then wanted to throw her off a fucking balcony when I..." Angel shook his head and looked away, growled, then turned back to meet her heavy gaze. "When I saw Cordy fucking my own damn son. Instead of just sending me a Dear John letter, you know, I ended up walking into some sort of fucked up version of a Faulkner novel."_

_Angel walked over towards the fireplace, shaking his head angrily and pounding his fist against the mantle, which made some of Brennan's knick-knacks rattle as he narrowed his eyes and turned around._

"_I mean, fuck!" he snapped, his lips curled in disgust. "Fucking Cordy, after all I've done for her over the years, she fucking tossed me aside. I mean, I know—I have to be fair. I know, in my head, I should remember that it wasn't all her doing. I swear I get it—I know that she wasn't herself when it happened. There was Jasmine and all that being possessed bullshit. But it still fucking hurt. But in my heart, Bren? It was still Cordy. She looked and sounded and smelled like Cordy. And I had to see her. I had to watch her when she chose Connor. Connor? Connor, for fuck's sake. She chose him, after everything, and then you know what she did? She spread her legs and fucked my son. She...she..."_

_Angel's hands again clenched into tight fists as he remembered standing there on the rooftop, watching them when he'd looked inside of the attic of the Natural History Museum as fire rained down around them, and how the anger bubbled inside of his chest each time he saw his son rear back and drive into her. _

"_She...she fucking chose him. She..." His jaw hardened as he stared over Brennan's shoulder and saw another face coalesce in the empty space. "And Buffy. Fucking Buffy. Who's brought betrayal to the level of a fucking art form. She fucking rejected me...more than once. And I don't just mean that she didn't want to be with me. She doesn't want a goddamn thing to do with me. She doesn't even want to admit there's even a fucking possibility that we might be on the same fucking side. Nope. Not anymore. It couldn't possibly be that. 'Don't worry about calling us on the Bat-phone next time, Angel,' she told me. 'We don't need any help from Wolfram & Hart, mmkay? Whatever problems we have, we can take care of it ourselves. Don't call us, and we won't call you, thank you very much. So, have fun with your new digs, Angel. Hope your new life is everything you wanted it to be.' Yup. I still can't fucking believe it. But that's what she had the fucking gall to say. And then you know what she did? Then she kicked my ass out and slammed the door in my face. She tossed me aside like yesterday's garbage. After all the sacrifices I've made for her. Even just the ones she knows about, she still fucking treats me like that?Well you know what? Fuck her and the Chosen One bandwagon she rode in on. It's not like she's that special anyway. I mean, it's not like she's the only girl I ever loved that tried to shunt me aside like that, huh?" _

_He turned his head slightly and brought his dark eyes to meet hers._

* * *

**-tbc-**

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**A/N2: **Eeeeee! An evil Dharmasera cliffhanger! Whatever shall we do? ::swoon:: Wait. The second half of the epic fang sex is already posted. Hurry up and read on...and don't forget to be kind and leave us a review for both parts if it's not too much trouble! ::grin::


	4. Part III: An Earlier Deal, Part B

**The Price to Be Paid**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: , then—moving on...

**Summary: **See previous chapter.

**Logistical Notes: **See previous chapter.

**A/N: **What are you waiting here reading this crappy note for? ::blinks:: Hurry up! Skip to the good part. You know most everyone else is doing it anyway.

**UNF Alert: **Still in effect from Part IIIA.

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**Part III: An Earlier Deal, Part B**

* * *

"_You know what?" he asked sardonically. "She's not special. As a matter of fact, there's only one person that special, and it's been you, Bren. All along, you've been the only one. The only one who hasn't fucked me over, tossed me aside, betrayed me, left me, shit on me. All of the others—all of 'em, Bren—all of 'em eventually showed their true colors. All of 'em eventually took what they wanted from me and fuckin' thrust me aside. In the end, they all treated me like a fucking piece of shit. And now...now, you're the only one left."_

_He looked down at the floor, closing his eyes as a loud, rough sigh rattled in his throat, then he brought his gaze up to meet hers again. For a moment, his eyes scanned her face, with its slender nose, square jaw, high cheekbones, following the long arch of her eyebrow before locking his dark, smoldering eyes with her pale, glimmering ones which flashed briefly in a willful challenge, as if she dared him to say the words she knew he held on the tip of his tongue._

"_So, what, huh?" he growled at her. "When are you gonna pull the rug out from under me, Bren? When are you gonna finally come clean and prove to me what a one-fucking trick pony I really am? I don't deserve any fucking better, right? So how about it? When are you gonna fuck me over, too, and bring it all full fuckin' circle, yeah?"_

_Tilting her head, Brennan thought about his question and then said, "You already know the answer to that." For the first time since he'd arrived, she felt some of the anger she'd been keeping a tight reign on flash. Clenching her fists by her sides, she shook her head as she said, "Goddamn it, Angel."_

"_What?" he growled at her. "What do you have to be angry about, huh?"_

"_Did I miss something here?" she questioned him. "Because I think you were the one that just compared me to the Slayer—when you know how I feel about her, how I've always felt about her since day one—so shouldn't I be the one to be getting angry here and not you? Or, is this just some delayed...well, I'd call it an emotional overexertion due to repression of your feelings about the turmoil that you've obviously sustained recently, but I believe the colloquial term to describe what's obviously happening now would be emotional meltdown that's obviously occurring because...well, why again?" She stopped, shaking her head, and then told him, "I'm sorry, but I'm confused about what's going on here, and more specifically what, exactly does anything that Cordelia or the Slayer's done to you have to do with me?"_

"_You even have to fucking ask me that?" he hissed, gritting his teeth as he watched her pale eyes darken as her anger peaked._

_He shook his head with a huff. _I wanna think she's different, _he told himself. _But the way she's just sittin' there, hyper-fucking-analyzing me like I'm some kind of interesting lab experiment. Maybe she is different, in her own way, but in the end it's all the same. _He growled and stared at her, his eyes mere slits as they peeked out from beneath his heavy, hard-knit brow. _All this kabuki theater, and in the end, the punch line is the same. You don't get to be happy, Angel. You don't get to have anybody or belong to anybody. You're just a cog in the cosmic wheel, boyo. A sacrificial lamb. _The word echoed in his mind as he stared his longtime lover as she stood there, a searing anger burning in her hard, glimmering eyes as they peered out from an otherwise impassive face. _Sacrifice. _A low growl sounded in his chest as he felt the last measure of anger bubble up inside of him. _Why? _the voice inside of him railed. _Why do you have to be the one to sacrifice your happiness? Why can't you have someone? Why not? Why can't you have her? If she's so different, then why hasn't she ever been the one to give you what you really want, what you really deserve, huh? _Angel felt his molars ache as he loosened his clenched jaw and opened his mouth to speak._

"_What the fuck, Bren?" he snarled. "I-I...I mean, fucking-a." He looked up, his jaw still tight as he nodded at her, "You know what? Fuck it. Go ahead. Be angry. I expected it. Be fucking pissed, and be done with it. Fuck me over, Bren. Go ahead. We both know that you've been sitting here, just watching all this like a fucking car accident waiting to happen, and now you're tellin' me I'm just emotionally repressed as a precursor to fucking me over. I get it. No need to put on any more airs. So just spit it out. Tell me to get the fuck out, Bren, and to never come back so I can say what I really want to say—so I can say fuck you, Bren. Fuck you and the hyperintellectualized cave you crawled out of. Fuck. Just—fuck!"_

_Angel put his hands on his hips and looked away, biting the inside of his lower lip as he went. Walking around the side of the couch, he grunted, then drew his hand back and threw a driving punch, his fist hitting the wall and chipping a couple of large flakes of textured cream paint off the wall._

"_You've got a lot of fucking gall, Bren. You...I thought we were one person, right? One soul, you and me. You—I guess you're no different than the others," he grunted._

"_Fucking hell, Angel," she snapped at him, his comment stoking her anger as her face flushed and her nostrils began to flare. "How could you, after everything we've been through, say something like that to me? I mean, really? I'm not some stupid little twit that you can just rail against because you're angry. I understand that you're hurt, and that you want to lash out, but you don't get to cheapen what we have...what we are...just because of the fact that you're so angry right now that you can't see straight, and I'm the only target around."_

_Angel felt the muscles in his chest tighten to the point that, had he needed to draw a breath, he would have found himself gasping for it. Every muscle in his body was rigid with anger, but as he stood there hearing her words, the rigidity gave way to a subtle trembling as a tiny voice inside of him whimpered. The voice called out inside of him, warning him not to destroy the one thing he had that was solid and worthwhile and good in his life, but his anger was so great, his hurt so deep, that his emotions had a momentum that not even the _thumetikon _humming inside of him could control._

"_Sometimes I wonder if you really even give a fuck," he grumbled. "You know, whether you really give a rat's ass about me, or the things that happen to me ,and the people I deal with—how I've been hurt," he told her. Shaking his head, he grunted, "I can't help but wonder if behind your well-reasoned, logical calm, huh, maybe it's all a way of masking the fact that you don't give a flying fuck." Looking up at her, he held her angry gaze as if added, "Yeah**, **maybe that's it, huh, Bren? Cordy chose another. Buffy rejected me. But like I said, you're different than all of them. So yeah, you've got to do it differently because you're a real cool customer who's just fucking indifferent."_

"_That's not fair," she said, standing up and walking over to him as her voice finally began to show the first sign of defensiveness in response to his taunts. "That's not fair, and you know it, Angel. I'm not...I've never been..."_

"_Do you really even give a fuck?" he shouted. "A fuck about me?" He turned to her and pointed aggressively at his chest. "Do you? If I fell off the face of the goddamn earth, would you even notice? Or care? Or—"_

_Her face flushed a deep scarlet as she closed the distance between them. "You asshole!" she said, taking a short, deep breath, then slapping him hard across the face. "You fucking son of a bitch," she said, bringing her arm back to strike him again when she felt his hand reach out and grab her by the wrist. "Let go of me," she demanded._

"_Like fuck I will," he said, his dark brows weighing heavily over his eyes as he tightened his grip around her wrists._

_She struggled in his grasp. "Let go of me, you fucking bastard," she hissed, bringing her leg up to knee him in the groin as his vampire reflexes enabled him to twist away in time so that her kick landed uselessly against the outside of his thigh. "You're out of your fucking mind, Angel," she said. "Let go of me now or I'll use more than my knee to bring you to heel."_

_He hesitated for a moment, then realized that once her powers came into play, he would lose the melee. "Fuck you," he spat as he let go of her wrists and pushed her away. "You and your fucking magic. What would you do if it weren't for your precious fucking magic? You'd be up fucking shit's creek, huh?"_

"_I don't need my fucking powers to bring you to heel," she muttered as she moved towards him again. Angel watched her, surprised that she would move in again as he stood there, his muscles like a coiled spring, waiting there in open-mouthed silence for her next move. "And, you know what else? After all the shit you've just pulled, you don't get to be the one to push me away." She then reached up and cupped her hands around his jaw as she pulled him in for a hard kiss. "You bastard. How could you ever think that I don't care about you, don't want you, don't have a single moment of the fucking day when I don't think about you?"_

"_No," he grunted in protest in the seconds before her mouth crashed against his._

_Her lips covered his open mouth, and her tongue swept into his mouth, swiping along the back of his teeth and glancing against his whiskeyed tongue. His throaty growl turned into a low moan as his tongue returned the favor and sought hers out, and he reached his hands around her hips and pulled her against him with a grunt. He squeezed her hips in his hands, his fingertips pressing into her flesh hard enough that a thought briefly flickered in her mind as to whether he'd leave bruises. After a painfully long second, she knew, as ever, he'd leave more than one mark on her this day before they were all said and done. His fingers fanned out and dug into the soft flesh of her ass as her fingernails scraped against the stubble on his cheeks, and their mouths worked one another with abandon. When he pulled her against him, he felt her heartbeat against his thigh and chest, pulsing hard against him as his own flesh awoke and pressed against her, throbbing with a need that grew more intense and painful with every passing second. Feeling his arousal grind against her as her tongue battled his, surging again into his mouth, Brennan felt herself losing control, and with a murmur of hesitation, she let their mouths clutch at one another for a few more seconds before she broke off the kiss._

_When they broke apart, Brennan backed away from him, struggling to catch her breath and regain some modicum of control. Her chest was heaving, and for a split second, as she saw him looking at her with a distinctly predatory and possessive glint in his eyes that had darkened to an almost pure black. Knowing that one of them had to__ keep things from rapidly spinning out of control—and at that point that she was the only one who was in any partial frame of mind to successfully achieve such a feat—she gulped down more air as she tried to use reason to calm the situation._

"_You're not being fair," Brennan said again, coughing lightly as she moved far enough away from him so that she felt she had the protection afforded to her by two or three feet of physical space. "You're saying things to deliberately try to hurt me. I know that. But, you know what, Angel? I also know that you know that I couldn't kiss you like that, make you feel and feel myself like I did just now when we kissed, if I didn't care about you. So, we're going to be stopping with the blind raging attacks on me. It would be would thing to treat me like that if I'd done a single thing to merit your behavior, but I haven't."_

_As she stood there, gulping for air as she struggled to catch her breath, she looked at him and saw his eyes burning black as he stared back at her with an expression she couldn't quite read. His arms fell loosely at his sides, his hands opening and closing in claw-like movements, as if he was struggling to grasp something—or trying to decide whether to reach out and lunge at her again. He drew no breath, but his nostrils flared as he stood there, watching her intently, grinding his jaw back and forth as the pink point of his tongue peeked out from between his lips. Brennan's breaths settled but she felt her heart flutter as she saw the hungry way he looked at her._

_Licking her lips, she swallowed once before she continued. "You came here to tell me you were shutting down your firm, moving from the Hyperion, and taking up with Wolfram and Hart. And, you know what? Because I know you, because I trust you, fine. I-I thought...I thought that you know what you mean to me, how I feel about you—how I've always felt about you. And, so that made sense to me that if you want my support or...my approval, in this, well...then fine. You've got it. I swear." She stopped abruptly, her eyes hardening again as she opened her mouth, and when she spoke had a more angry edge to her voice than she had just a moment earlier. "But, I fucking refuse...do you hear me, Angel?" She saw his jaw tense beneath his pebbled, scarred skin, shifting a bit as he gritted his teeth, and together with the flicker behind his coal-black eyes, this was his only reply to her words. "Because this part is very important, so listen closely. I refuse to pay the freight because either Buffy didn't react the same way when you told her or because you're still smarting over the fact that Cordelia fucked your son instead of you. I absolutely fucking refuse to do it."_

_Angel clenched his jaw firmly as he leveled a hard stare at her, his expression so rigid he felt a pulsing tightness in his temples and a round, persistent ache across the top of his head._

"_Do you want me?" he asked, biting each word as it fell from his lips. "Do you? Do you want me in your life still? Or..." For all the tension and the angry torrent of thoughts that flooded his mind, he couldn't bring himself to finish._

"_You already know the answers to both of those questions," she said sharply. "My answers have never changed, and I seriously doubt they ever will because I'm not the Slayer. I'm not Darla. I'm not Cordelia, Angel. I've never not chosen you..." She paused as she shook her head, adding, "I'm not the one who fucked your son instead of you."_

_Angel grunted loudly and stepped towards her, stopping when his nose was a couple of inches from hers. He could feel her breath on his chin as he shook his head slowly, holding the inside of his lip between his teeth as he tried to ignore the twittering energy that crackled through his limbs. "Do you know what I would've done if it had been you I'd seen Connor on top of that night instead of Cordy?" he muttered to her. "Huh? Do you?"_

_Brennan looked at him and then shook her head, watching him with a critical, if curious, eye to see what he would do next when she answered, "No, I don't."_

"_If I'd have seen Connor tucked between those creamy, shapely thighs of yours, covered all over in sweat when you wrapped them around his little tiny waist, trying to slam into your hot, sweet pussy with his tiny pencil dick like you should be drilled and failing miserably at it even as he was grinnin' at those nice tits of yours rollin' back an' forth as he did," he said, his mouth hanging open as the image made the raw anger froth and boil over inside of him all over again. _

_"You wanna know what I'd ha' done if I'd seen that, lass, huh?" He grunted, and leaned in even closer to her as he said gravely, "I'd have killed him...with my bare fucking hands. I'd have ripped his head right off those skinny little shoulders of his. The only thing good that I've ever made or created, lass...if it had been you, I would've—" His voice trailed off for a minute before he recovered enough to grind out, "You're the only one, Bren. The only one who—" He swallowed hard and uttered a sigh that vibrated in his throat, emerging as a raw, rumbling growl._

_Angel pressed against her, reaching down and grabbing her hip in his large hand as he tried to explain. He felt a heat surge through him, burning beneath his skin as he felt her warmth through his clothes, and in that moment, he wanted to melt into her, to merge himself into her and possess her completely. He raised his eyes to meet hers and licked his lips as he saw her normally-pale eyes had darkened and glittered back at him in a way that made him even hungrier for her._

"_You're the only one who makes me feel this way, who's ever made me feel this way," he said, his voice dangerous and low as he spoke to her. "You're the only one I'd kill my own fucking son over. The son of my own body. But if he'd...if he'd have tried to take you from me...there's not a fucking force in hell or on earth that would stop me from tearing him apart. If I lost...if you...if I lost you, I-I...I couldn't deal with that. I can't...no one gets to take you away from me, Bren. You're the only one who's never betrayed me, or never tried to fuck me over. If...if you...if you ever...if you ever tossed me aside the way she did, the way they did..."_

_Her eyes hardened as she looked at him and said, "You know what? You really piss me off sometimes, Angel."_

_For a moment, Angel found the momentum of his anger suddenly halted as her emotional shift—from measured rationality to anger—finally registered in his chaotic, agitated mind. A couple of seconds of silence hung in the air between them before he grunted a single word question: "Why?"_

"_Because!" she muttered. "I'm...you know why I would never do what she did? Because I'm not like Cordelia or the Slayer or any of them. I'm smarter and better and just...well, fuck." She paused, her nostrils continuing to flare as she leveled her piercing stare at him._

"_Of course you're better," he replied. "You've been around the block a hell of a lot more than all the rest of them put together. You've had more Tuesday-evening fucks during even-numbered years than either Cordy or Buffy can account for in all the fucking either of 'em's ever done in their lives. No surprises there."_

_Shaking her head, she smirked at his backhanded compliment. Drawing a breath, she then leveled her gaze at him. "Touche," she told him, her eyes hardening once again as she looked at him. However, this time, instead of letting calm and reason guide her, Brennan let some of the emotion she'd been fighting against letting subsume her since they'd started this conversation begin to well up inside her. Narrowing her eyes, she smirked at him as she said, "But, there is one small, if quite important distinction you missed, Angel."_

"_Oh, yeah?" he growled. "And what's that?"_

"_You know," she responded. "At the very least, if I did choose to fuck your son behind your back, I'd sure as hell be smart enough not to get caught. I can guarantee you that you never would've found out unless I wanted you to know, let alone have you walk in on us."_

_The fire that had been smoldering in Angel's dark brown eyes flashed as he gnashed his teeth together and growled so loudly it sounded much like a roar. He shook his head as he felt the burning desire inside of him flashover, searing him from the inside out. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, but he couldn't see anything but her eyes and the crooked grin that hung from her lips, which were still reddened and bee-stung from their kiss. He felt a painful tugging in his gut as her words sank into his consciousness. Angel's mouth fell open and he shook his head again unable to see or think or feel anything other than the excruciating pain with which he ached for her._

"_You wouldn't dare," he muttered, his words trailing off before he moved like lightning._

_His movements were a blur to Brennan as he used his vampire speed against her, moving so suddenly and quickly that he was already on top of her as he backed them until they landed on the couch with an audible thud, his knee between her thighs and looming over her as he pinned her hips to the couch with a jerk of his hips. She actually felt him before she realized what he'd done and his actions were punctuated with another growl in her ear._

"_You wouldn't fucking dare—" he snarled at her._

_She struggled against him for a minute before she muttered, "What do you think you're doing?"_

"_You're mine," he growled as his lips brushed against the shell of her ear, and he felt her body, warm and quivering beneath him. "You can't set me aside. You don't get to choose, okay? You're part of me. You're mine. No one else's. Just for me. Mine."_

_As a new wave of her anger hit his nostrils, he felt a furious rumble in his chest, then all the muscles of his shoulders tighten as the smell of her anger fed his own, like splashing fuel on the licking flames of a growing fire. Angel felt his brow twist and thicken, driving low over his eyes as his lips curled back to expose two rows of jagged teeth, each framed by a pair of long fangs._

"_Mine," he snarled, his voice dark and metallic as he thrust his hips into hers. "And you're gonna never fucking forget it. You're mine, and no one else's. Mine, and mine alone, huh?" He jerked his pelvis against her with a brutal grunt. "Mine. Fucking mine. Always mine. And you better never forget it."_

_She looked up and saw him, his face contorted into its demonic mein as his dark eyes were flecked with gold, glittering with a wildness and a ravenousness that she had never seen in him, not in all the years she'd know him, whether as the lewd, amoral killer Angelus or as the normally more patient, passionate, soulful Angel. Even in the years she'd shared her bed with Angelus, his unpredictability was expected. This time, his complete lack of self-control took her by surprise, which both excited and, at some unspoken level, caused her a slight more bit of concern that she normally felt in his presence._

"_You egotistical son-of-a-bitch," she grunted as she looked up at him, indignant but also incredibly turned on by his words. However, her ego and self-respect demanded that she not give into him just quite yet and present some type of further challenge to his attempts to possess her so unilaterally. As ever, she knew he'd never respect otherwise if she caved to him so easily. "Do you really think you can pull something like this and get away with it?"_

"_Yeah," he said with a sarcastic, fanged smile. "I do. Because...well, after that little kiss back there, we both know that you're sure as hell not gonna do anything about it." He paused and then snickered. "But...if you wanna have some more fun and try, go ahead," he taunted her. "I dare you."_

"_Don't," she cautioned him. "Now is not the time to be baiting me, Angel. We are so close to being out of control here. Normally, I'd say fine. You want us to be out of control, fine. I'm ready for it then. But, we both know that you're the one who always likes to play it safe and hold back on me. So be very careful, because once I let loose, we both know that all metaphorical bets are off, hmmm?"_

_He shot her a look as he considered her words, snickered, and then ignored them, speaking as if she hadn't said a thing, and he hadn't heard a word. "Come on, Bren," he sneered. "Go ahead. Do it. Do the one thing that will make you no better than Darla or Buffy or Cordy. Reject me. Tell me no. Tell me to stop. Use those magic powers you have to to put as much distance between us as possible. Go ahead. I dare you."_

"_Angel," she growled, refusing to break eye contact with him. "I'm warning you."_

"_Do it," he repeated, still bent on taunting her into letting go of every last measure of the self-control that he'd watched her carefully cultivate for a hundred years and following him over the cliff into oblivion. "Or fucking give me what I fucking want. Let me take what I want. Let me have...you. Just you. Let me fuck you."_

_Looking up at him, she stilled as she said, "Why?"_

"_Because_—"

"_Not good enough, Angel," she said with a shake of her head. "You're going to have to do better than that."_

"_Why the fuck not?" he countered. "It's not like you've ever said no to me before when it came to us fucking."_

_Brennan was quiet for a split second and then nodded. "That's right," she said firmly. "I've never, ever said no to you, have I?"_

"_No," he answered. "You haven't."_

"_Whatever you've needed from me—whatever, whenever, wherever, however—I've always given it to you," Brennan said. "So when have I ever given you reason to doubt me? When have I ever pushed you away?"_

_He looked at her for a long minute, his eyes so dark they'd almost blackened to tiny shards of obsidian. "You never have," he finally growled, his mouth hanging open as his soft palate pulsed in anticipation of tasting her._

"_That's right," she snapped. "I never have. And, that's why, sweetness, you're going to have to do better than that if you want me to let you take me."_

"_Fuck, Bren," he growled at her. "If I do...then...let me...I want you," he responded, trying to string a coherent sentence together. "I need_—_I need you to let me have you."_

"_Really? This way?" she asked him. "Are you sure this is what you really need from me?"_

"_Yes," he hissed. "I-I need...I need to be inside you. It's driving me fucking insane every goddamn second I can see you, hear you, smell you, feel you against me and know that I'm so fucking close to being able to bury myself in you, but I feel like I'm still so fucking far away. It's fucking killing me, Bren,"_

_He stopped, and then said with a sudden evenness in his voice that surprised them both, "You've always said you wanted me to stop holding back, to come to you without any fears or reservations. To open up—to be myself, you know. To show you all of me. You've always told me to trust you...to trust us. Well, I'm finally trying to fucking do it, and I need you to let me."_

_She licked her lips as she looked at him, the tip of her tongue darting between her already bee-stung soft pink lips. Studying him, she finally asked, "Let you do what, specifically? What do you want to do to me?"_

_He pressed his knee hard against her, using it to slide between her thighs. The soft material of the black knit pants she wore was thin enough that he could already feel the heat of her wetness beginning to bleed through her panties. He inhaled a deep whiff to confirm with his keen nose what he already knew—that she wanted him nearly as badly as he wanted her, though he knew she would not say a word to acknowledge it._

"_That," he said, using his knee to rub against her crotch. "I want that. There. Right there. I want to be there. I want that, Bren. I want to be there, and I want to touch you and taste you and feel you. I want it, and I want it without limits. I wanna take it, without holding anything back when it do." He paused for a moment, then said. "Let me take you with everything I am, and I'll give it to with everything I have. I want that. And more importantly, I think you want me to have it. And I think you know you want it. We both want it, and I think we both need it, so just say it. Admit it. Admit you want me to have it."_

"_Why would I want to do that again?" she asked, even as she flushed and knew that she was stalling merely to be difficult and to annoy him for the earlier insults he'd hurled at her in his anger since they both knew it was only a matter of time before she gave into him. "Tell me," she demanded._

"_Because you know what I'll do if I get to go where I want to be," he muttered, his balls aching more painfully as she resisted him. "You know what I'll do to you."_

"_That being?"_

"_That being," he said as he let go of her arms and used his hands to push up the cream colored knit shirt she wore. He yanked the top up, past her breasts, which bounced free in front of him as she wore no bra. "There, I'm gonna start right there. I'm gonna wrap my mouth around your tits and suck on these nipples of yours so hard that by the time you figure out how much they're aching, you're not going to know whether it's from me sucking them or your own arousal getting so bad that you can hardly stand it." He reached down and used the nail of his index finger to flick her semi-pert nipple. He felt a sharp tug in his groin as he watched her arch her back while she hissed at his touch. "Yeah, that's where I think I'll start."_

"_And then?" she asked breathlessly, feeling sweat begin to bead on her forehead as she writhed pleasurably underneath his touch._

"_Then," he said as he moved back from where he was using his legs to keep her hips pinned to the couch. "Then, I'm gonna move down." He illustrated his point by wrapping the fingers of both hands around the hem of her pants. The elastic waistband brokered no resistance as he mercilessly ripped them down her legs, peeling them down the smooth, creamy expanse of her thighs with only one thought echoing in his mind_—_he wanted to see more bare skin._

_He wanted to see her naked._

_As soon as he tossed her pants to the side, his eyes skimmed down the long line of her legs, and he reached her ankles. But instead of being greeted with the warmth of her smooth skin, he felt an annoying fluffy material that caused his lips curled in a grimace. "These socks," he muttered, tugging at the fluffy blue socks she wore. "Been spending time in the kiddies' department, Bren? Is this some kind of new thing for you? Am I gonna go into your dresser back there and find a whole drawer full of wussy, stripy, rainbow-colored socks? I mean, for fuck's sake." He yanked the socks off and flung them aside._

"_I wasn't expecting company," she growled. "My feet were cold."_

"_Aye, well, lucky for you then that your feet are the last damn part of you you'll be thinkin' about, lass, when I'm done wit' ya," he said with a sloppy grin as his eyes surveyed her bare skin. "Because ya know where I'm gonna start making you burn, lass? Right down here," he growled. "Right to where I can take what I finally want from you and make it so that you'll never even think about not choosing me. You won't be able to make any choice but me. You won't even __think__ about making any choice but me. I'll be right here_—_right where I can pull your legs open, rip those dripping panties off of you, and shove my hard cock so far inside you that neither one of us is gonna know where the one ends and where the other begins, huh? Because we're in this for keeps."_

_Her curiosity piqued, Brennan stopped struggling against him. She remained still, interested to see what he would do, even though her growing arousal made remaining still exceedingly difficult to do._

_He cocked an eyebrow at her when she saw her blue eyes riveted on him as he asked, "You want to know what I'm gonna do then, Bren? Isn't that what you said?"_

"_Maybe," she answered vaguely. "I might've said something like that...possibly."_

_He gave off a sharp bark of laughter as he said, "Like fuck, 'maybe'—you fucking pretty little liar. We both know that you want to know what I'll do to you almost as much as I want to do it to you."_

_He leaned forward, covering her body with his as he pressed his weight against her, until his fanged mouth was no more than an inch from the tender lobe of her ear. He jerked his hip into her so she could feel every inch of his erect length as it pressed through his trousers into her thigh._

"_Once I'm inside you, I'm going to fuck you," he said. "I'm gonna fuck you hard and fast, lass—hard and fast, so totally outta control, your head'll spin. And once I start, I'm gonna fuck your goddamn brains out, and I won't stop until it's done, and more importantly, you won't want me to. You'll want me to keep at it, pounding into you harder than you've ever been fucked, again and again for long as I can. Every time I pound into ya, you'll wonder why we ever held back before even if we thought were giving it our all. Because this time, lass? You know why it's different? 'Cause you an' me, we're done holdin' back, mmm? Fuckin' done."_

_Angel leaned more of his body weight against her pelvis, pressing his erection into the crook where her thigh and hip met, grinding against her in a way that sent a jolt of pleasure searing up his spine but that also made her own body shiver and pulse with want. The moment her body responded with a flash of additional wetness between her legs and a sudden racing of her heart, Angel sensed it, and a lascivious smirk cut across his handsome face._

"_And why...would I want that again exactly?" she growled. "Hmmm?"_

"_Because, lass," he said, thrusting his hardened groin against her with a grin as he noted how her face had flushed a deeper pink as he'd begun his rant. "You already want it. You always have. You want it...you want it so damn badly that you're damn near going out of your mind wanting me to keep at it, even if you know you're gonna be walking with a limp for the next week 'cause of the brutal fucking I gave you because you know...'cause we both know that the only one who's ever driven me to this fucking point is you. You've always wanted to drive me to the point of darkness, yeah? To the point of no return? To the place where the demon is finally let free? Well, fuck, Bren—then here it is. We're there, lass. And you'll want me to do it because you know you're the only one that's ever pushed me so far and the only one I've ever trusted enough to let them push me that far." He paused, his eyes sliding over her body as he nodded to himself before he continued speaking, "Yeah. But you're all about the proof these days, so we both know you need to see it to believe it, huh? So you'll want me to ram this hard, thick cock of mine up into you as deeply as I can, so deep and so hard that each time I move, you'll hear the sound of my balls smacking against your sweet, rockin' ass."_

_Angel paused for a moment, his nostrils flaring, not from respiration the way a living man's would, but rather because his sinuses were tingling with the smell of Brennan's ever-increasing arousal, which filled his nose with the spicy, musky scent he'd come to know as hers alone since the very first night he'd known her, nearly a century and a half earlier, drilling her into the soft pile of her Oriental carpet in front of the oversized hearth in her Cheapside sitting room. And as he thought of the smell and its significance, his own want of her increased ten-fold._

"_You're gonna want me to keep pounding into you, driving into you and filling your snug, wet snatch until we both can't take it anymore, and then I'll fuckin' let go, and I'll come inside of you, and then you'll be drippin', so full of me you won't even be able to stand it, mmm? In more ways than one, aye." He grunted at the thought of it. "You want that, lass—me anchored inside of you like that, even though you still won't have gotten what you really want? Because I think you do. I think you'll want me to take you to the fuckin' edge. You wanna be right where I am, right where you're on fuckin' fire and you're teetering on the edge, right there, barely hangin' on, and feeling every fucking second of it just like me. You want me to take you there, pullin', hissin', and clawin' me all the way just like you pushed me there, huh?"_

"_You're making an awful lot of assumptions there, Angel," she grunted. "You that certain you're right?"_

_He licked his fangs, his mouth watering as he felt the faint tingling along the roof of his mouth grow almost painful in anticipation of having her. All he could see through the pinched slat of his vamped face's field of vision was her, and all he could smell was the spicy, musky tang of her desire, and as he held his mouth open in silence, all he could hear was the sound of her heartbeat, throbbing in its unique rhythm against the outside of his trousered thigh. All he wanted was her, and as he began to envelop himself in the feel of her, he knew she wanted him as badly as he wanted her._

"_I fuckin' know it," he continued, "Just like I know that by the time I'm done with you, right when you think you're about to die from the fact that you still haven't gotten off, you know what I'll do, Bren?"_

"_No," she said, her voice hoarse as she struggled to sit up and scoot her back against the arm of the sofa. "But, for some reason, I'm getting the distinct impression that you're going to tell me."_

"_Damn right I'm gonna tell you," he muttered, growling as he felt her pull away from him, leaning forward to take back his rightful place, snug between her thighs. "You wanna know what I'm going to do to you?" he asked, punctuating his question with a raw grunt. "Do you, huh?" He raised his arm up and braced it on the back of the sofa, lifting himself up a bit to reduce the pressure on her pelvis._

"_Either tell me," she growled. "Or not. But, enough with the fucking guessing games. I'm not in the mood for it right now, Angel."_

"_Fine," he told her. "Fucking fine by me. Then here it is, lass, not that there are any surprises, really. It's actually pretty fucking simple. After I've fucked the hell outta you and shot my load into you, I'm going to reach down and pick up some of that pretty wetness that'll have beaded down your thigh. You and me, mixed...all in one? That proof that we can't ever get away from one another? Well, I'm gonna take it on my fingers, using that pretty glistening stuff to lube you up a little—if you even need it, though I don't think you probably will—and I'm gonna start rubbing your clit, which is gonna be hard and swollen up the size of an almond by then, mmm? It'll be so fuckin' sensitive, it'll be almost painful. But the pleasurable kinda pain that I know you fuckin' love. Because this isn't just about me, lass. It's about you and me, so I'll be rubbin' ya until it's gonna just about kill ya, the pleasure and the pain of it all wrapped up into one crazy feeling that's liable to drive you damn near outta your mind—then, that's when I'll do it."_

"_Do what?" she hissed. "Make me crazy, Angel? Is that what you finally want from me, to do to me? Break me? Maybe not using my soul, but in another more twisted and deviant way, hmmm?"_

"_Yeah, I'll wanna break you, and you'll wanna break for me, too," he responded. He then shook his head at her as he added, "You've been makin' me crazy for fuckin' years, lass. I think it's more than high time I returned the favor, don't you?"_

"_You can try," she challenged him as her eyes skimmed lazily up his sateen-shirted chest to admire the triangle of olive skin that peeked out where he'd left the top three buttons undone. "You're welcome to try."_

_"Fuck trying," he said. "Once I start, that'll be it, lass. You won't know what's happening, and I probably won't either. And I think it's safe to say that we're both gonna be pretty okay with that because it's gonna feel so fuckin' good...be that fuckin' good, you're gonna be writhing and moaning when you finally get right there, you know, right there on the edge of fucking oblivion. And do you know what seein' you move like that is gonna do to me? I'm probably gonna get hard inside you all over again. Then you'll be screamin' my name and raising such a fucking ruckus, the neighbors'll remember that you have no fuckin' sense of shame at all. Everyone'll hear you and they're gonna be torn between callin' the cops to report you for disturbin' the peace or clickin' off the TV and jumping one another right where they are so they can start fuckin' each other's brains out from how fuckin' hot it is just listenin' to us fuck."_

"_You think I'll be the only one screaming?" she blinked at him, and then her pink lips curled into a leering smile. "Hmmm, if I didn't know any better I'd say that sounds like a challenge to me, Angel."_

"_Aye," he nodded at her. "Maybe 'tis. Because we both know that it's always better when we fall at the same time, aye? You'll want me right there with you. When you think you can't take it anymore—when you can't stand another fuckin' second of the pulsing, sweaty, throbbing that's set your body on fire—that's when it'll finally happen. You'll finally crack. You'll shatter into a million tiny little pieces, huh, and if there's a Lord in fuckin' heaven, you'll take me with you when you do." Angel shook his head as he tried to hold back the tidal wave of desire that was welling up inside of him. "That's right, we'll both come—even if by that point I won't be in any state to see one of the most beautiful things I've ever fucking seen—and then you know what's next, lass? Hmmm? Because as pretty a picture as all that is, stay with me, alright, 'cause this is the important part, okay?"_

_Brennan looked at him for a long minute. She was torn between wanting to push him off of her and reassert some of the control she felt that he was dangling in front of her like she was a cat and he was offering her a ball of yarn and wanting to give in to him. The very sensation he'd described—the steady throb that had started faintly when he'd first begun speaking and had quickly grown so that she couldn't tell it apart from the pounding of her heart that rang in her ears—continued to distract her. Her inherent stubbornness flashed once in her mind. But, ironically, it was her curiosity and not her arousal that quieted it as she wanted to see what he would say next...and rationally she wanted to know if he would make good on his implied promise, even though if instinctually she knew that he would._

"_I'm listening," she finally nodded at him._

_Angel drew his tongue in circles around the points of his fangs as he felt the tingling on the roof of his mouth again and his nostrils burned with the smell of her arousal. He grunted again as if to implore himself to hold it together for just another minute._

"_Good," he nodded. "Then, I'm glad that I'm the only thing in that pretty little head of yours right now, lass. Because it'll make it all that much better when you finally do come if I'm the only thing rattling around in your head besides how I'm making you feel. You'll be screaming my name as you're falling off that edge into oblivion, but the only thing you'll have to remember is that you got there—and I've been waiting there for awhile for you to catch up because of what you've already done to me—but you'll be there because of me and what I did to you_._ Just because of __me__—because of what I did to you, and because of what I do for you. Because you're mine, lass. Just mine."_

_He stopped, reached out with his mouth, and gently but firmly nipped the soft, tender flesh of her earlobe with his front teeth. He then moved away, pulling his head just far enough away from hers so that she could see that the gold glint that reflected off his brown eyes had begun to eclipse the darker color as his eyes started to pulse yellow._

"_Do you understand?" he growled at her, punctuating his question with a deep grunt. "Mine. You're mine. No one else's. Just mine. Just me."_

_Brennan smacked her lips and then leaned back against the softness of the couch's cushions. "Hmmm," she murmured, almost as if she was unimpressed by what she'd just said._

"_Hmmm?" he repeated, frowning at her response. "What do you mean, 'hmmmm'?"_

"_Hmmm," she told him, her words coming a bit breathlessly as he stared at her flushed body. "I-I...I think...that that's...a lot...to live up...to...don't you?"_

_He snarled in response and pulled further back from her. Using the palms of his large hands, he pressed into the softness of her thighs before he let his fingertips dig into her skin, marking her in a way that he knew would leave bruises. Not one to remain passive, Brennan responded by using her forearms to sit up. In the cloud of aggressive lust he felt to possess her, Angel didn't see the tell-tale warning sign that her eyes no longer looked at him with the normal pale blue irises that usually stared at him, nor with the darker indigo of her desire. A tiny orb of electric blue energy hummed in each eye as she looked at him, her brow furrowed as her face focused on him. With a slight wave of her hand, the energy shot out and knocked Angel off of her. He landed no more than a foot or two away from her. However, he was quickly back on his feet as he turned to her with a predatory look on his face as indignant rage colored his response._

"_What the fuck, Bren?" he growled, the massive wave of desire that threatened to overwhelm the quay of his self-control suddenly dampened by the fear that the rejection he'd anticipated all along had finally come to pass._

"_If you think you can take me," she said, giving him a taunting smile. "By all means, I suggest you come back over here so we can resume what we were just doing...but this time, make sure you do it without those goddamn pants and those fucking boxer briefs of yours that I know you've still got on, hmmm?"_

_A touch of the rage he'd felt at what he perceived as her rejection of him was mollified at bit as she lifted her right hand and beckoned him with the crook of her index finger. He licked his lips and nibbled at them with the tips of his fangs as he reached down and tugged at the silver buckle of the simple black leather belt he wore. Tugging at the belt, he stared at her arched eyebrows for a split second before he growled again and moved in a blur._

_By the time he came back at her, however, the only thing he was still wearing was the midnight blue button-down shirt that covered his chest. He used his hands to grab her knees, not needing to tell her to lift her ass up so he could pull away the knit pants that had bunched just past her hips. Tossing them aside, his eyes darted to the lace trimmed cream colored panties she still wore. They partially concealed the dark curls he knew were already glistening with evidence of her want of him. Using the tip of his index finger, he began trace small lines up and down the center of the panties, ghosting over where he could touch her slit if the offensive garment weren't in his way. He felt her buck her hips lightly in response towards him, and he grunted when she managed to knock his hand to her inner thigh._

_Leaning down, he began to nip the sensitive skin of her upper thigh, only stopping when there was no more than an inch between his mouth and the part of her body where her thigh ended and the lower curve of her hip bone fit into its socket. His wet tongue darted out, lapping up the sweet beads of perspiration that had collected there, even as he felt her fingers sneak down and intertwine in his hair._

_She mumbled something incoherent, but he really wasn't paying attention. Unable to help himself, he continued to use his tongue to find just the right spot, even as his other arm snaked up between them and snuck underneath the soaked barrier of her wet panties._

_Pressing his index finger into her slick folds, he gathered some of her own moisture on one of his fingers before he inched his way up towards her clit. Making good on his earlier promise, he began to move his coated fingertip along the top of her clitoris in short, rapid strokes. The up and down rubbing sensation made Brennan utter a foul string of expletives. Knowing she was distracted, and unable to help himself any longer, when he at last found the exact spot that he was looking for, he opened his mouth wide and sank his fangs into the softness of her skin._

_The moment his canine teeth pierced her skin, Angel felt her blood begin to flow into his mouth in soft pulses with each beat of her heart, the coppery-tasting liquid pooling in the small space between his lips and gums, coating his teeth and covering his tongue. He let his mouth fill with the taste of her, enjoying the way his hard palate itched in anticipation as he finally brought his blood-wettened tongue up to the roof of his mouth. His entire mouth became coated with the smooth, metallic taste that was so uniquely her and he swallowed the first mouthful of her, moaning a little as her blood soothed his throat, which had grown painfully dry with want. As the first swallow of her warmed the inside of his belly, he closed his lips around the pulsing wound, pressing his teeth more firmly into her thigh as he drew a hard suck, encouraging her body to give up more of its intoxicating liquor to him._

_She always tasted sweet, he thought to himself, somehow a part of him still able to cobble together a coherent thought even as his mouth was filling with pulses of her warm, sweet, tangy blood, his nose swirling with the musk that signaled her growing desperation as his fingertip rubbed her hardening clit, each short, tight stroke eliciting a sharp, sigh. He fell into a two-stroke rhythm—he would give her thigh a hard suck with his lips, then letting more of her blood pulse into his mouth as his finger jerked up and down over her bead—and each time, her sighs became louder and higher in pitch while her blood, which pooled like liquid silk in the space between his canine teeth and his twisted lips, began to taste sweeter and smoother as he sensed her falling into a rapid spiral towards release._

_Something flickered in the recesses of Angel's mind as he realized how close Brennan was to coming, and in that instant, he didn't want to give her the release she wanted. His jaws slackened and he opened his mouth, hesitating for a moment before pulling his teeth from her flesh with a long _fwisssp _sound as he let his finger fall away from her throbbing clit._

_Brennan's brows knit together in a petulant frown as she grunted at the sudden loss of contact. A couple of droplets of her blood clung to the corner of his mouth as his pulled away, and one of them loosened as he moved, dribbling down the side of his chin as his tongue reached out and lapped up the other before it got away. Angel sat up, suddenly aware of the painful aching in his groin as he looked down at her, her cream-colored cotton panties soaked through with her desire._

_She stared at him, her pale eyes flashing bright blue with an emotion that Angel couldn't quite locate along the continuum between disgust and ardor. She opened her mouth to speak but held silent for a moment as she tried to still her ragged breath, then said, "Why...why did you stop...you bastard?"_

"_I'm not giving right now," he growled back in reply. "You owe me. You owe me and then some. So right now? Right now, I'm taking. And you're giving."_

_Brennan narrowed her eyes and her square jaw hardened at his words, and for a long moment she said nothing. At last, she then asked, "And, what exactly do I owe you for?" For a few seconds, he thought about it, his eyes narrowing and then widening as he struggled to find an answer. When he stared at her for a time, saying nothing, merely licking his lips in expectation, Brennan's frustration flashed as she suddenly snapped, "Quit fucking around. Tell me."_

"_Fucking around?" he grunted, glaring at her from beneath his heavy, gnarled brow when he finally spoke. The fact was, he had no answer. Perhaps he could've thrown her some made up bullshit answer about a debt she owed him for the hundred years he suffered in hell because he'd refused to give in and relinquish her fractured soul to The One, but the he knew he couldn't blame her for sending him to hell in the first place. Other times and things came to mind, and quickly he pushed them aside. He knew, had he thought about it, that she'd never refused to give him anything he was willing to ask her for, and that the only regrets he'd had were for things he never had because he'd never been willing to ask her for them. But in the heat of the moment, he couldn't weave together a coherent response, so he snorted derisively and retorted, "This isn't a fucking game, lass."_

"_Fine then," she groaned, wincing at the way her body continued to thrum even though he was no longer touching her in the places or ways she desperately wanted him to touch her. "Stop playing and show me what you want, what you can, what you're going to do." She leveled a rigid stare at him. "You just spent all that time telling me about what you wanted to do to me, what you were going to do to me. Now that it's time to actually do something, why all the hesitation?" She paused and then gave him a suspicious look. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think that you were all just talk, Angel. All talk and no action, hmm?"_

_Angel's thick vampiric brow knit even lower over his deep-set eyes as they flashed at her words, and he clenched his jagged, fanged teeth as her words soaked into the ropy folds of his mind._

_"Action? Oh, I can act, lass. I can definitely act, lass," he nodded at her. For a fleeting second, he was reminded of what it had been like to kneel in a tunnel support trench in Belgium, ready to light the long line of det cord that ran to an array of daisy-chained high-explosive mines a quarter mile away. One the fuse was lit, there was no going back, and he was about a millisecond from lighting that fuse for them both. "But are you sure you can handle it?" he asked her. Because once I start the action, I'm not gonna stop."_

"_When have I ever told you that?" she asked him. "When have I ever told you to stop?"_

"_Heh," he snickered. "Good point." He looked at her for a minute, his narrowed gaze taking in the sardonic glimmer in her darkening blue eyes and the skeptical kink in her brow. Her mouth hung open in a crooked grin that dared him to swallow it up. That sexy half-grin of hers had made his balls hitch a thousand times before, but in that moment, the way her blue eyes flashed brightly and her tongue darted between her slender, pink lips out to wet them as she returned his stare made his cold blood boil with aggression and long-suppressed want. A long growl sounded from behind his gritted teeth and formed the only reply he could utter. He reached down and, crossing his arms, grabbed the hem of his dark blue button-down shirt, pulled it over his head and threw it to the side. "I wanna feel you," he explained. "Every fucking bit of you. All of you. Now. I want nothing between us. Not anymore. Never again."_

_Brennan gazed up at him as he loomed over her with one arm braced against the top of the sofa as he leaned into the other which was pressed hard into the couch next to the narrowest part of her waist. He was a portrait of tightly-coiled tension as he hovered above her, every one of his muscles rigid. She blinked and raised her chin defiantly, unable to hide her faint smile as she saw his biceps and pectoral muscles twitch when she opened her mouth to speak again._

_"What are you waiting for?" she taunted him. "If you're going to do something, then do it. Now."_

_Angel opened his mouth with a snarl that reminded her of the sound of a long blade being unsheathed from a scabbard, and he took a deep whiff of her musky scent as he brought his left hand to her breast, grinning at the feel of her hard point against his broad palm, and squeezed. He bent his head down and pulled her nipple to his mouth, gently kneading the pebbled flesh between his sharp teeth. His jaw hardly moved as he merely nibbled her sensitive, darkening flesh, but his demon's teeth were almost razor-sharp, and even the lightest touch scraped her delicate skin in a way that caused her to wince at the simultaneous pain and pleasure of it._

_Angel rolled the point of her nipple once more between his teeth then released her, letting the breast fall away from his mouth as he raised his head and smirked at the sight of her chest and shoulders, deeply flushed after his latest round of ministrations. His gaze trailed lower, from the notch at the base of her slender neck, along the sweat-damp valley between her breasts, over her gently-curved belly, skirting over the firm rim of her navel before arriving at the waistband of her panties. He cupped her mons, stroking his fingers over the soaked-through fabric, applying just enough pressure to her clit before hooking his thumb under the waistband and roughly tugging the garment off her hips and, grunting in acknowledgment as Brennan raised her hips, down her legs, grunting again as he tossed the damp wad of fabric to the floor._

_He looked down at her again, now laid before him, her ivory skin shimmering with sweat as she stared back at him, her blue eyes gleaming as her mouth gaped open in expectation. Angel reached between his legs and fisted himself, his twisted lips forming a crooked smile as he noted how, for reasons he never really understood, he was always a little harder and a bit bigger when he let the vampire inside of him come out. Curling his fingers around himself, he leaned into her again, pulling the skin taut on his shaft as he swiped his swollen tip against her own slippery, swollen flesh. Brennan arched her head back and sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth as she felt him drive into her, opening her up, stretching her and filling her more completely than she could remember him having done in a long time._

"_Oh, fuuuuccckkkk," she moaned as he jerked all the way into her, his heavy balls smacking against her ass as he bottomed out inside of her._

_He didn't give her even a few seconds to adjust to having him inside her again before he pulled out and slammed into her again with a loud, aggressive grunt. His jagged, fanged teeth were gritted and his golden eyes squeezed shut as he began to roll his hips back rhythmically, pounding into her again and again, each driving upstroke being heralded by a throaty growl as the power of his movements caused Brennan's ass to slide a bit back and forth over the sofa cushion. Somewhere in the dark, silent recesses of Angel's mind, he recognized that she was not as actively involved as she normally was, and had merely let her hands rest on the bony edges of his hip, the tips of her slender fingers pressing ever so slightly into the sides of his ass, but consumed as he was by the ferocious pounding he was giving her, he gave it no mind and let the thought evaporate from his consciousness. It would turn out to be a mistake that he would later realize he knew better than to make when he felt her move._

_As he continued to finally answer her taunt, Brennan felt it very important that she not use her powers. Her mind was fractured, but for some reason, she knew she needed to keep things between them, in this, as equals—as something they met only as a man and a woman. Still, her previously-dismissed stubborn streak was not quite as easily banished as she had thought. When he made a particularly harsh jerk into her that stretched her in such a way that it teetered on the edge of being more painful than pleasurable, Brennan's obstinateness reasserted itself with a vengeance. Her eyes narrowed, she gritted her teeth, and she used every ounce of willpower she had to thrust her back and legs up against him when he pulled away from her and prepared to slide himself home once again._

_The pair fell off the couch, knocking the coffee table away from them as they struggled for dominance. When he realized what she'd done, Angel's yellow eyes flashed as they sought hers out. He opened his mouth with a snarl as he jerked into her, partly to assert dominance and, more importantly, to make sure he stayed anchored inside of her where both of them wanted him to be. The searing flash of anger made his hands tingle and his fangs ache, and he leaned forward, trying to pin her hands to the floor, twisting his hips as he held himself balls-deep inside of her._

"_You runnin'...from me now, lass?" he grunted at her. "I thought...you wanted to see...what I could do, remember? No more holdin' back, aye?"_

_Eventually, after rolling over twice on the brightly colored Oriental rug that she'd had for as long as he could remember, they landed so that Brennan was on top of him. She had no words to respond to him, and instead, answered with action. She reached out for his arms, trying to make a grab for them. When she overextended herself just a bit too much, he growled again, rolled them over again so he was once more dominant, then reached out and pinned her arms above her head just as she'd been attempting to do to him a minute before._

"_There now," he told her. "That's how it's done, lass."_

_Bucking her hips up and into him with all the strength she could muster, Brennan breathlessly muttered, "I think...we both know...how it's done by now, Angel. Don't...you?"_

"_Fuck yes, I do," he grunted back. "You ready to show me what you can do, lass? Or you gonna need a bit more tutelage, huh?"_

_For a split second, blue eyes met fiery yellow. Never one to be cowed by the sight of his demonic face, as ever, Brennan distinguished himself from all his other non-vampire lowers by not only embracing his demon side, but relishing in it. She lifted her head to his as her mouth sought his out for a greedy kiss._

_The moment her lips met his, his mouth opened, and he swallowed her kiss, murmuring as he tasted the peaty tang of the whiskey and the faint, lingering heat of Asian peppers, the combined effect of which warmed his tongue as it slid between her lips. His mouth covered hers, his lips curled back as he crashed his lips against hers. His tongue surged into her mouth, and she could faintly taste her own blood, coppery and smooth, on his velvety tongue as it glanced against hers and swiped along the back of her teeth. Something about tasting her blood in her own mouth, knowing how it had gotten into his mouth when he plundered it from her, lit off something primal within her. Brennan went on the offensive, pushing his tongue out of the way as she chased it. Letting the tip of her tongue swirl around the edges of his fangs, she smiled a little at the way he moaned at the sensation. She reached up and cupped his jaw in her hand, stroking her fingers across his stubbled cheek as she pulled him into her kiss, exploring the warm, slick inside of his mouth, able to taste the faintly spicy flavor that was uniquely __him_ _amid the overwhelmingly metallic taste of blood._

_As they kissed, that was the last bit that Brennan needed before the hum she felt growing from the core of her body began to reverberate outwards. That hum started to surround the pair, heightening every movement, every feeling, every sensation that either one of them felt. The blue electrical energy shot out, it seemed, from every pore of her body, and enveloped them in the static charged environment of pure and unadulterated fucking that threatened to swallow the pair of them whole._

_Angel felt it before he saw it._

_As he felt her pearly luminescent ivory skin, as smooth as marble and but warm against his cool palms, he felt her melting into him, the energy buzzed in the narrow space between their bodies. The fine hairs on his arms, and the coarser hairs on his legs, suddenly stood on end, and his cold skin became speckled with gooseflesh as a raw current surged up his spine and crackled through his sinews, from his shoulders and groin out to the tips of his fingers and toes. As the waves of azure-hued energy rolled off of her body's sweat-glistened curves and pulsed through him, he felt something else begin to buzz inside of him. It was a low, rumbling hum when he first noticed it, but as their mouths grasped at one another, finding the same rhythm in the warm, sweet space between their mouths as governed the movement of their hips, he recognized it. As the low vibration hummed louder in his ears each time he drove into her silky depths, the demon inside of him began to realize what the man inside had known all along._

_His eyes skimmed along the line of her collarbone to the notch at the base of her neck, where he'd nuzzled hundreds, if not thousands, of times before, drowning himself in the one place where he could fill his ears with the sound of her heart thundering in her chest, fill his nostrils with the perfume that was hers alone, feel the way her aortic pulse warbled against his lips, and occasionally drink from the sweetness of her blood. He loved that place, and for a few very long seconds, he stared at that little place, awash in the blue haze of their connection**. **The energy between them tingled against his skin while the longtime bond between them smoldered beneath, and as he brought his eyes up to meet her bright blue ones, he knew that he didn't need to possess her. He already had her, and had for decades, ever since the night she pulled him in from the cold. She couldn't leave him even if she wanted to._

_When he pulled away from her, finally allowing Brennan to gasp down air, she gave him a teasing smirk and she said, "See? Much better...isn't it...when you aren't talking?" She punctuated her words with the only action she could manage since he still had her hands pinned firmly over her head. "You...always...talk...to much," she grunted. "Always have...always will, I think." Twisting from side to side, she moved her taut nipples against his chest, dragging them in a swaying motion against his upper body._

"_Oh, sweet hell, lass," he sighed, leaning into her as he felt his balls tighten at the contact she'd just initiated between the two of them. He opened his mouth to say more, but the only thing that came out was a low grunt._

_For her part, she was already fast spinning past the point of coherence and moving toward the mark of being able to only mutter curse words and half-finished breathy whispers of sentences. "Ohhh, fuck," she moaned. "I-I...oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."_

_Twisting against him, Angel smiled as he moved to resume his earlier motions. Each time he pulled back, he drove into her again, harder and faster and deeper than he had before, leaning into her and pinning her thighs into the plush fibers of the carpet as he wanted her opened up completely for him to harvest his pleasure from her, and in so doing, let her take her own. Over and over again, he swung his hips back, pulling nearly all the out until only the very tip of him was left inside of her, then slamming back into her again with as much strength as he could muster, his body colliding with hers with a violent force. Eventually, so consumed with the raw, animalistic nature of their fucking, he heard only his own primitive voice—the sound of his own grunts and growls—mixed with her inconsistent string of curse words and the slapping, squishing sounds their bodies made when they moved against one another._

_His mind focused on the feel of her, spurred on he was by the sound of her peaking moans, her sighs and her groans, the hissing sounds that passed from her lips as she gritted her teeth and inhaled sharply. Each time he heard these things, he was inspired again, feeling that she was again pushing him over the edge, and again, he would reach out to take her with him as he hurtled towards the precipice of his own release. He felt himself harden and swell inside of her as he moved closer and closer to his breaking point each time he surged into her. Angel began to spiral out of control towards release as he felt her body begin to tighten around him such that each slamming stroke and hasty retreat assaulted his senses with a depth of pleasure and feeling so intense that it was painful._

"_Grrrrr," he growled as he hammered into her. He opened his eyes and gazed down at her, and his eyes were filled with the sight of her―her breasts swaying on her chest with each rolling stroke, her porcelain skin glistening with sweat and flushed pink with arousal, her blue eyes bright and heavy-lidded, her mouth hanging open as the pitch and pace of her moans soared each time he drove into her. "Ohhhhh, nnnnnggthh," he groaned. "Fuck!"_

_At last, he released her hands as he reached down between them, grabbed one of her pert nipples between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed, hard enough that he knew it would hurt. He grinned at feeling her shudder beneath him at the sensation of it, and it was only then that her utterance—a sharp sigh—registered in his conscious mind after a slight delay. Quite pleased with himself, he repeated the action, more slowly and slightly less hard as he rolled the point of her nipple between his fingertips, and was rewarded with a breathy groan as she craned her head back and exhaled. Palming her breast again, he squeezed it in his big hand as he pulled back, letting up on the pressure of his grasp each time he rammed into her. His balls hitched as he heard her moans begin to grow more frequent._

"_Ohhhh, fuck," she sighed, lowering her chin and bringing her twinkling blue eyes down to gaze at the place where they were joined._

_For a few seconds—seconds which seemed to last tortuously longer than she ever could've imagined such a minute amount of time actually lasting—she watched as his hard length slid in and out of her. Her whole body felt on fire from the way he moved inside of her, and when she saw a single bead of sweat roll off of his twisted brow, watched it down the side of his face, and felt it as it fell onto her belly, she knew she needed to have just a bit more of him before she'd shatter and break as he'd promised they both would._

"_Touch me," she groaned in his ear, a whispery plea as she arched her back to meet another one of his thrusts. "Keep touching me."_

"_Can't," he murmured, his fanged mouth hanging open and his lips moving uselessly for a moment as he blinked and struggled to form words. "Not now...can't...Not yet...Can't...you...you start? I'll...finish."_

_She gave a small mewl of protest, but she reached up and cupped his jaw with one hand even as he leaned down to greet her with another kiss. Angel brushed his lips against hers, then pulled away for a moment before leaning in again to meet her now-parted lips. He murmured into her open mouth as his tongue sought hers out, tracing the tip of his along the edge of hers as he felt her lips move against his, drawing him in more deeply._

_When they parted, Angel narrowed his eyes slightly as he saw Brennan's hand fall away from his face and slide between her legs. But by the time the completion of her movement registered in his mind, he was too lost in the pounding momentum of his own pleasure, hurtling rapidly as he was towards his own release, to do much more than quietly grunt her name._

"_Bren...unnngghhh..."_

_Angel leaned into his hands and drove into her, all of the anger and tension he'd felt a few minutes before sublimating somehow amid the way she felt, so moist and snug as her body closed around him each time her came into her, and the breathy moans and sighs he heard her give as the fog of his fury finally seemed to lift. He felt her racing heartbeat throb against his belly as he moved against her, and the waves of her body heat roll off of her, warming his skin and washing over him, and he found himself soaking in that warmth as if it was a hot bath._

_Brennan looked away from where her hand worked her own hard, swollen flesh and raised her gaze to look at her lover's face, and saw his features slowly smooth and flatten as he moved, rolling back and forth into her. His twisted, thickened brow relaxed and his darkening eyes emerged from under the heavy mantle of his demonic visage. As he closed his eyes, his mouth fell open, and she watched the jagged rows of shark-like teeth soften and whiten into the human dentition she was used to seeing. His long fangs receded and as a peaking groan passed from his lips, he opened his eyes and, blinking a couple of times, finally met her gaze. Just moments later, he jerked into her a couple of more times before surging into her one last time, driving into her as his balls suddenly tightened and he fractured, pressing into her and holding himself there as he flooded her with his release even as he cried out in thankful relief._

"_Oh, fuuuccckkk, Bren," he muttered. "I'm gonna...fuck. Ohhhhh...nnnnmmmpphht."_

_He thrust into her a couple more times, even as some part of him realized he hadn't felt the tell-tale clenching of her walls around him signaling that she too had come. Knowing she was still touching herself, he shifted as much as he could to not interrupt her even as he twisted his head so that he could reach for her mouth once again. He covered her mouth with his, smiling against her parted lips as he felt her tongue sweep across his lips. Angel felt her moan as he swallowed it into his kiss and drew her tongue deeper into his mouth, closing his lips around it and sucking it gently with his lips before releasing it. He closed his eyes and rolled his hips back, slowly withdrawing until only the very tip of his still-swollen cock lay inside of her, then hesitatedas he swiped his own tongue along the sensitive, wet underside of hers, savoring the sweet taste of her and the feeling her pulse throb gently in the vein he felt against his tongue. He pulled away one last time, holding her lower lip captive between his for several seconds as heslowly pressed into her warm folds again, sliding home again and burying himself root-deep into her before breaking the kiss with a sigh of his own._

_She felt herself start to fall over the edge and hurtle towards release as he kissed her. But, any question of her coming or not was wiped away when he pulled away just enough to reach for her earlobe. He nipped it lightly before he sexily called out her name._

"_Ohh, Bren."_

_And, that was when she crashed, her walls fluttering around him even as she realized in the moment, as he'd promised, she couldn't remember anything but her gratitude for what he'd just done to her. Even then, she wasn't certain she could recall his name, let alone her own, as she floated towards a lethargic pleasurable post-orgasmic haze that was waiting to cradle her in its satisfied bosom._

_After it was done, not surprisingly to her, he was the first one to pull away, but she was ready for it. Almost as if she'd been expecting it, something clicked in Brennan's brain as he shifted away from her. She reached out, knowing it was very important in that moment, that she limit the distance that he would try to put between them._

"_No," she muttered, using her hand to make a grab for one of his shoulders. "Don't."_

_Even as the haze of his release hung over him, Angel leaned back and tried to pull away, a sourness swirling in his belly at the thought of what he'd just said and done to her. He hated himself for it, and he tried to wrest himself from her grasp as he chafed against the notion that she didn't hate him for it, too._

_At her words, his motions stilled, but he didn't stop trying to squirm away from her, even if he stilled his movements into a token protest. "Bren, I should go."_

"_No," she repeated, wincing as she tried to sit up and disentangle herself from him. "No," she said again, this time more insistent, more firm in her wording. "That won't be happening."_

"_But," he said, his voice rough, even as he still refused to look her in the eye. _I'm a monster, _he winced. _I'm no better than I was before, all those years ago. God, what have I done? _He closed his eyes and turned his head, unable to meet her gaze. "What just happened—"_

"_Happened," she said with a grunt as she finally managed to stand on shaky feet. Angel had scooted to the far end of the couch where he sat, still not able to face her. Sighing, Brennan said, "But, it's okay."_

"_No," he said with a guilty shake of his head. "No, it's not."_

"_Angel," she sighed, reaching out for him, skimming the outside of his naked calf with her fingertips, her touch so light that it barely tickled the wiry hair on his legs, as she made her way up to his thigh, finally bringing her hand to rest on the gentle curve of his quadriceps muscle, just above his knee. "Please. Trust me. Stay. Please."_

"_No," he whispered, his face long and with a heart-tugging sadness in his heavy-lidded brown eyes. "No, Bren—I can't. This is...look, what I just...really, I can't. I should just—"_

"_Angel," she repeated, realizing that she needed to try a different tack with him. "Please. Don't go."_

"_I have to—" he tried to protest again. "What I did to you—"_

"_You didn't do anything to me that (a) I didn't at least want done to me and (a) wasn't something that I didn't do to you, too. Besides," her voice softened a bit as she looked at him pleadingly. "If you leave now, then this wicked little cycle of ours is never going to get off the wash-rinse-repeat cycle we seem to be stuck on."_

"_No, Bren—please," he said quietly. He looked into her pale, pleading eyes as they glimmered back at him and he felt a tightness in his chest. _How can you look at me that way? _he thought. _After what I did to you just now? This wasn't the way I wanted this to go. I don't understand why you haven't thrown me out yet. _He held her gaze for several seconds, then sighed and shrugged. "I guess," he whispered. He swallowed and shook his head sadly. __"Look, I mean...when I decided to come here tonight, I didn't come here for sex, Bren. All I did, I just...I just wanted to tell you what was happening and to give you the choice."_

"_Noble," she said, "But, you can't tell me that you don't know by now what my response was going to be, Angel. I'm not...well, I'm not like others. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't let you go that easily. I couldn't...I'm just not able to cut you out of my life like that." She paused, taking a step towards him, and lifted out a hand towards his face. She hesitated for a minute before she stroked her thumb over his knee and said, "Look at me, please."_

"_I can't," he said, his voice still raw when he spoke. He felt a tightness in his throat and chest as his stomach clenched at the thought of the cruel, insulting way he'd spoken to her, the way he'd so utterly lost control and the selfish way in which he'd taken her. "The way...I mean...what I did...I just can't."_

"_Yes," she nodded. "You can."_

_Reluctantly, after a long minute, he lifted his troubled gaze to his. This time, she was unable to stop herself as she reached out and cup his jaw. "Don't do that," she whispered. "Please don't—"_

"_I can't help it," he whispered back. "What I just did—"_

"_What __we_ _just did," she corrected him. "Was sex, Angel. That's all."_

"_No," he insisted. "It's...I've...we've never...not like that."_

_Shaking her head, she continued to stroke his chin as she said, "Okay, yes. Maybe not in a while. And, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn't just sex. But, Angel...we've been here before. You know that, I know that. Maybe we haven't been as far over the line as we were just now, but this isn't anything new between you and me." She was silent for a minute, conceding the point to him partially. "We both know we've been here before, Angel...for a number of different reasons, and that's okay. We've been here before, and it's a statistical guarantee that we'll be here again. And, that's okay. You and me...us...we're okay here. It's alright, Angel."_

"_No, it's not, Bren," he sighed, remembering the other times he'd taken her with a demon's face, his lust fueled by anger and jealousy that crackled between them. It sickened him to think that what had happened was not just a one-time thing, and that, as much as it pained him to think of leaving her again, he needed to get away, far away, lest he hurt her again. "I-I...I can't keep doing this to you, Bren. I should go."_

_Letting her hand drop, Brennan was suddenly on him, pushing him back into the high pile of the couch. She straddled his groin, hoping as she did so that the strain she already felt, wouldn't show as weakness on her face. When she pressed her body against his, she knew she had his complete attention._

"_You're not going anywhere," she told him. "You're here. We talked. We fucked. It happened, Angel. That's it. Period. End of story."_

"_That's not all that happened and you know it," he muttered with a sigh. He remembered arguments they'd had over the years—once, back in Cheapside, and another, several years before when she was still in Chicago, among many, many other times—when she'd reached into his trousers and taken him in her hand while the argument still raged between them. He knew she'd fight to keep him there, and if she resorted to such tactics, that she'd win since he'd would never fight to leave her once she started doing such things to him. "This wasn't just—"_

"_Fine," she sighed. "We talked, we argued, you fed, we fucked, but you're still not going anywhere."_

"_Bren, please—"_

"_No," she said firmly. "You're not leaving me. You don't get to leave me. I-I...you wanted to know that I was yours? So the demon came out to play for a bit to make certain? Well, you got your answer. I am. I'm yours. Always have been, always will be, no matter what happens. But, guess what, Angel?" She paused only long enough to press herself against him before she said softly, "I want to know that you're mine. So maybe the witch is going to come out to play for a bit now to make certain for me." She stopped, looking into his eyes, and then said, her voice more vulnerable, "Don't leave me."_

_He was quiet for a minute and then said, "I hurt you."_

"_No," she answered. "Not really." She paused and then gave him an appraising look before added, "You'll only hurt me if you go now...if you leave me, before we figure out how to handle things."_

_The first sign that she knew meant that he was going to give into her was when he leaned forward and reached up, wrapped his arms around her back, and pulled her to him._

"_This is really fucked up," he said quietly. Then, with a dark, scarcely audible laugh, he added, "Even for us."_

"_No," she corrected him. "It's not that bad. It's just...we just need to figure out where to go from here."_

"_Meaning?" he asked. He rolled his lips between his teeth as he watched her tilt her head to one side and considered her response. Her forehead was smooth, not creased with confusion or anger, and the line of her mouth, with its warm, soft pink lips, was straight, if anything slightly curved at the edges as a faint smile flashed across her lips as she began to speak._

"_Meaning," she said. "In the past ten years or so—I mean, okay, not quite ten years, but you know what I mean. Ever since..." She paused, steeled herself with a breath, and then tried not to make a face as she said, "Ever since you ended up in Sunnydale, you and I have been on this pattern where you go about your business, I go about mine, but when something happens with the Slayer or one of the others, you end up knocked off kilter. Then, you end up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, I let you in, we talk, usually the talking ends up seguing into an exchange that rates somewhere between fierce bickering and out and out arguing, and then we end up fucking." She stopped, reaching out to stroke the back of his head, the silkiness of his hair reminding her that he'd gotten it cut shorter in the back than he had usually kept it styled in recent years._

_Taking another breath, she said, "Do you remember that night...the night you came to me four years ago in Chicago, right before I left for D.C. and you were going to start the private investigations firm?"_

"_Yes," he answered. "I remember."_

"_You said...that night, you said that you wanted to start to put things right between us," she reminded him. "Remember, after all the mess of what happened with the Slayer? You told me that you wanted to to try. We both said that, didn't we? The bit about you and me and us wanting each other...that's never been the issue. But, we both agreed that we'd try to see one another as often as we could, setting time aside for one another. Remember?" she asked again._

_His memories flashed to another night when they'd had a particularly brutal fight and ended up in much the same set of circumstances they had on this night. Guilt began to cloy at him as he realized what she was really saying. Still, since she gave him no choice, he could only answer, "I remember."_

"_Right," she said. "So do I. And, I also remember that despite the promises we made to one another, we haven't really..." Her words faded as she saw the pained expression in his sad brown eyes. "Look," she sighed. "I'm not blaming you. It's my fault just as much as it is yours, but despite what we said that night, despite the promises we made to one another, we never really followed through. So, that's why...that's why I think we've gotten stuck in this rut."_

"_Okay," he replied. He was quiet for a minute, listening to her heart steadily beat against his cool chest, before he asked, "What do we do to change that?"_

"_I think..." her voice trailed off and then she was more confident when she continued her sentence. "I think the answer is actually pretty simple. We said we'd make as much time as we could for one another. So, we need to do it—to start making the time."_

"_Right," he said, his voice suddenly clearer and less broken than it had been just a minute before. "But, you know that I wouldn't...I mean, I remember that Halloween is important this year, Bren. I mean, it's not like it isn't always important, but I know we need...you and I, we need our time. I know that, and I remember. I'll make certain we do."_

"_I'm not worried about us not making time for Halloween," she said. "We did that five years ago, and we were further off track at that point than we are now." Pausing for a beat, she then said, "Instead of just making time, I think...this time? This time we need to do something special. It won't be...this time, it won't just be about Halloween and needing to renew the bond, Angel. This time...this time we can plan to make a weekend of it maybe, hmmm? Halloween, I think...I'm fairly certain that is, that it's on a Friday. So, this time...maybe I'll come to you? You've been to see my new place now, but I won't have seen yours, so maybe I'll come out to L.A., and we'll find a way to spend a long weekend together...just you and me?" She paused and then asked, "What do you think?"_

_Interlinking his fingers as they rested in the small of her back, he pressed against her, before he answered, "This is what you want?"_

"_Yes," she replied instantly. "Don't you?"_

"_I do," he answered, but there was still a note of hesitation in his voice. A voice of doubt in the back of his head warned him not to invest too much hope, lest he be disappointed again by yet another woman. He shook his head lightly, dismissing his doubts as he reminded himself that this woman—this woman was not just another woman. She was a part of him, and had been for a very, very long time._

_He paused for a beat as he cleared the dissonant thoughts from his mind,then explained, "It's just that...Halloween is six, almost seven, months away, Bren. I don't...I don't want to wait that long to see you again."_

_Unable to help herself, she said, "You're here now. When do you have to be back?"_

"_I-I...I don't know," he said honestly. "I mean, I flew commercial into Dulles from L.A...it was a real bitch because the plane was delayed and this old woman who was on the window seat wouldn't put down the shade, so I kept having to wrap myself in the goddamn airline blankets. I might've just as well been wearing a damn burqa."_

_Trying to swallow a smile since she didn't want him to think she was laughing at his discomfort when it was really more his reaction to what had happened to him that she found amusing, she asked, "Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but with Wolfram and Hart being as big a firm as they are...shouldn't they have at least one private jet or something?"_

_Angel was quiet for a minute. A sheepish look came into his eyes, then he nodded, "Yeah. I'd think that they'd have at least one."_

"_And, as CEO of their L.A. office, shouldn't you be able to take said jet anywhere you want?" she asked. "One of the perks of working for the evil multidimensional corporation?"_

_He shrugged. "I-I..."_

"_The answer would be 'yes'," she told him. "Which means you're staying for a few days, I'm calling in sick to the Jeffersonian, and when you're ready to head back to L.A., you'll make a call and be flying back on the corporate jet...not on Delta with that damn connection in Atlanta that I know is the one that made you late." She pulled away from him slightly, tilting her head as she blinked innocently, "Right?"_

_Once again surprised at her, he couldn't help but smile as he asked, "Do I even want to know how you know that I flew Delta?_

"_No," Brennan said with a shake of her head before she leaned in to kiss him once again with a mischievous smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Probably not."_

The wisps of the strong memory faded away from Brennan as now it was her turn to look to Angel to see what type of response he had to her points.

* * *

**-tbc-**

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**A/N2: **So, there we have it. How was that for some epic flashback unfness? Of course, we hope that you didn't get distracted (too much) by all the fangs and sex that was in that really long chunk—which we hope was worth the wait. There was a lot going on in that piece which was pertinent to what's going on back in real-time in Brennan's apartment in D.C. Did you catch it all? ::pause:: Yeah, well, who are we kidding? It took us a few times—okay, more than a few times—to get past the fangs and sex , too, and we wrote the damn thing. Anyway, coming up next, Angel and Brennan spend their last few hours together and try to make peace with what's going to happen to them both. It will be a bit angsty (read: a bit = a lot), but we promise there will be a good payoff in the end. (A really good one... ::cough::) Until then, we'd love to hear what you all think of the latest bits that have been revealed. Thanks!


	5. Part IV: The Bargain's Price

**The Price to Be Paid**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: , then—moving on...

**Summary: **See previous chapter.

**Logistical Notes: **See previous chapter.

**A/N: **We appreciate all the great feedback. Some of our readers have asked that we place an appropriate tissue warning for the sad stuff. Consider yourself warned. But, also remember...it's always darkest before dawn, right? Now, when we last left Angel and Brennan—

**UNF Alert**: Oh, wait. Damn. Do we still need this in the middle of a full on Category Five tissue alert? ::pause:: Yup. Thank God for flashbacks, right? ::grin::

* * *

**Part IV: The Bargain's Price**

* * *

Brennan smiled as she thought about the plans they'd made for her to come to visit him on Halloween, six months after the night he came to her, angry and hurt by the betrayal of some of the people he'd held closest to him, and in no small part, fearful that—despite his rationalizations to the contrary—he'd betrayed himself by accepting the offer to join Wolfram & Hart. As her memories of that night faded into the back of her mind, she remembered how that reunion, which she'd hoped would mark the beginning of a new phase in their long-standing relationship, had shifted things in ways neither of them had anticipated—or even really understood at the time—when she'd discovered he'd been magically compelled into sleeping with one of the Wolfram and Hart employees instead of being with her. Blinking away the memory of that night, Brennan refocused her attention on Angel as she realized that their subsequent actions from that time forward had finally broken the cycle. Yes, things had been going very well for them to that point. But then, she thought with a sigh, L.A. had quite literally gone to hell for a year—even if time had passed in hell for him in one way and slightly different for her so that a year apart to him was just a few months for Brennan—during which time Angel had become human.

"I was an idiot," Angel said, shaking his head as he thought of how many times he'd ventured into the world, looking to find a place for himself in the world—a place where he truly belonged, a place where he could be accepted, and where his life had meaning—only to realize that the farther he ventured from her, the farther away he felt from himself. "All of them...Darla, Buffy, Cordy...none of them wanted really wanted _me_. They only wanted the guy who they wanted me to be. They didn't want the _real _me. As soon as they realized that I wasn't what or who they wanted—well, you know what happened..."

"So, that's it?" she asked. "That's all there is to it? It was just because...well, it was because you could be with me in ways you couldn't be with them since I always just wanted you as you always were?"

Angel said as he took a step towards her as he shook his head in response before he said, "No." He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I mean, look, if you want a big philosophical treatise, and if you've got another bottle of that 18-year old awesome Jameson's stuff tucked away somewhere, I'm sure I can wax on a bit more in depth, Bren, but..." He paused and grinned. "Knowin' a classy English lady such as yourself han't too much patience for the endless ramblin's of a pathetic, sodden Fenian lout such as me," he said, letting his long-faded brogue bleed through on the edges of his voice. "Maybe it's best that I stay sober, so...well, yeah, that's all there is to it. You just wanted _me_. You never tried to change me. You took me as I was and was more than happy with me as I was. I never had to be more than I was in that moment. I was always good enough for you just like I was because you always accepted me. And well, basically...all of them? From Darla to Cordy? I guess what Cordy did, in a way, was variation on a theme. In the end, though? She was no different than any of the others. When all was said and done, even if Jasmine had something to do with it, she still betrayed me. It was no different then when Darla rejected me and threw me out of her house in Borşa even as I pleaded with her to help me or when Buffy run me through in the chest with a sword and pushed me into a vortex that sent me to Acathla for a century of torment even as I reached for them. All of them...they were all the same. All of them—"

He stopped, his voice trailing off before he looked straight at her, his facial expression softening a bit as he looked at her with sincere emotion in his warm brown eyes. "Of all of them, Bren, you mean more to me than all of the others combined, and it's not just because you're the last one standing. You, me, us...we—I guess, well—you were the only one who never hurt me because it was more important for you to get what you wanted then what was better for us. So I think that's the best way I can explain it. That's...well, there's your answer, I guess."

She was quiet for a minute and then asked thoughtfully, "So, you're telling me that you...you and me. Us. It works just because I've never betrayed you?"

"I didn't say that," he said, shaking his head gently as he pursed his lips and looked at her. Her pale blue eyes sparkled back at him, but he noticed they seemed almost averted, shaded by heavy lids as if she somehow wanted to hide herself and the ever rare emotional vulnerability she was displaying from his gaze. She punctuated her question with raised eyebrows, which creased her forehead while her lower lip trembled slightly as she awaited his answer. Angel felt an itch in his fingertips, and he wanted to reach out and smooth her worried brow and soothe her quivering lip with a kiss, but he hung back and simply smiled at her.

"You just asked how you were different from them," he told her simply. "Well, Bren, those are a few of the big reasons."

Brennan considered his words, chewing on her bottom lip for a moment in response. Them, after a moment, the emotion she felt clearly thick in her voice, she said quietly, "Well, then, it seems like I'm the biggest fool of them all, aren't I? Because now it seems I, too, betrayed you in my own unique completely fucked up way." She shook her head and added, "And I didn't even let you profess your undying love for me or let you play the hero for me before I did it." She stopped and gave him a mock look of disdain that she hoped would delay her from letting the tears that were welling in her eyes from falling. "God, I'm an idiot."

"Bren—" he said, his voice soft again, as he took another step towards her. "Lass, no. Please, please don't think like that. It's not...you and me? Whatever's happening here today? Whatever's gonna happen tomorrow and the next day and the next day, it's not the same. It's not the same because what you did...I know that you did it out of love."

As she lifted her gaze to meet his, a look of dumbstruck awe washed across Brennan's face. It was a look that very few people ever saw on her face, one of complete surprise, shock, and utter amazement.

Angel watched the expression on her face shift from a tense, pinched uncertainty to a slackened, open-mouthed look of wide-eyed surprise. A feeling of warmth oozed through his chest, and he felt his belly flip as he realized that maybe—incredibly, perhaps, considering all that they said between them over a century and a half—she didn't know that he recognized how deeply her feelings ran for him. As he stood there, he felt a surge of energy crackle through his limbs and he wiggled his fingers as a part of him wanted to touch her.

_I love you,_ he murmured silently, his lips moving uselessly as a dizzying torrent of feelings rushed through him. _I love you, and I want you, and I need you, _he blinked back at her in silence, a soft smile cracking his handsome face before another thought eclipsed all the others that swirled through his mind. _And I'm gonna lose you, _he thought as the smile on his lips wilted. _And there's nothing I can do about it. _He threaded his fingers through his sweaty hair, pursed his lips and smiled again. _This hurts, but I can't hate you for it. I can't. I love you._

"Bren," he said quietly, taking a step closer to her. "I know that—"

Shaking her head furiously as her fists clenched against her side, she struggled to deal with the new wave of strong emotions that crested over her at his unexpected tenderness and implied forgiveness. Feeling as if she wouldn't be able to stay as strong as she knew she'd need to be to do what she knew faced her in the coming hours, days, weeks, months, and years, she fought to cling to the last images of what she hoped would be his anger at her.

_If he's angry at me_, she thought miserably, _then maybe it won't hurt so much._

"No," Brennan suddenly snapped. "You don't...don't—oh, God, Angel. Please don't do this to me. Please don't try to act like you don't think this thing I've done is any different than abandoning you to a vampire hunter or sending you to hell or even sleeping with your son. Because a betrayal is still betrayal."

"Bren," he said, scratching his bare belly absentmindedly as his heart ached at the sight of the anguished expression on her face. His eyebrows folded low over his warm brown eyes as a thought occurred to him. "Did I betray my son when I did what I did to him—had him sent to live with a family, who could love him and care for him, and keep him safe and happy, even when he had no memory of who I am or what I did? Was that a betrayal, that thing I did for him?" Angel let the question hang in the air between them. "I don't think it was. Did I violate his trust? Did I do this thing for myself? No, I did it for him. To protect him. To give him a normal life, the kind he deserved, but one that I couldn't give him." He took a deep breath and swallowed, then said, "Believe it or not, I know what you're going through, Bren. I mean, fuck. I did it not too long ago myself. I know the pain you're in...I know the guilt you're feeling."

Brennan looked at him for a minute, studying his face, before she shook her head, "If that were true, then you wouldn't have gotten as angry as you did. The truth is, right now, you do feel that way, and you're just trying to hide it."

_Oh fuck, _Angel thought as he heard the tightness in her voice. _What do I have to tell you so you'll believe me? Jesus. _He closed his eyes for a brief moment and took a breath. _Please, lass. I don't know how much longer we have together, but I don't wanna spend it this way, me hurting, and you hurting, and us grinding it all out like this. I don't want you to remember me, remember us like this. _He swallowed and rolled his lips between his teeth as he felt a growing knot in the pit of his stomach. _Please. What do I need to tell you so you'll believe me that...that I forgive this thing you've done, even though...even if I don't think you've done anything that needs forgiveness. _He took a breath and sighed. _I'm the lucky one. When this is done, I won't remember. But you—I don't want you to hurt. I want you to get through this. To move on somehow. To have a happy life. _A flash of feeling flared in his nostrils and his eyes burned as the gravity of it all weighed down on him. _A happy life...without me. Like you think I will...without you? Fuck_—

"I'm not angry at you, Bren." he insisted, trying to keep his voice firm and even though inside he felt himself cracking. "I'm not. This—whatever this is, you didn't betray me."

A slight cry warbled from Brennan's throat as she realized in that moment that, no matter how hard she tried, he wasn't going to give her the emotionally charged angry response she thought she both deserved and needed from him, and it nearly broke her. Still, stubborn as ever, she tried again to elicit the response from him that she thought was the only one she deserved given what she'd done. "Oh, God," she started to sob. "Please don't—don't try to soften the blow, Angel," she said, her jaw rigid as she felt her entire body tense with anger and disgust. "I know that's what you think I've done, the way I've taken the choice away from you. And, it's made even more so by the fact that we both know I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I had the chance to do things all over again."

Angel stared at her for a minute and then sighed, realizing that in a way, he'd been in this exact position before. He hadn't liked it then, and he liked it even less now since it was Brennan who was the one staring at him. He'd been in her place, but this seemed immeasurably worse, because he cared for her more than he'd ever thought he'd care about anything else in the world, and he felt her anguish as his own—and in a way, it was. He wondered whether, if he'd went back, would he have looked then as Brennan did now: fragile and deeply cracked under the staggering weight of emotion and circumstances, as if a single hard blow would make her fracture into a million little pieces. Feeling his frustration grow, he looked away from her to gather his thoughts, since he knew how he worded things was incredibly important in that moment, lest something in the words he said to her would make her shatter under the strain.

"Look, Bren," he began, his voice soft and faintly grave as he looked at her. He sighed, then nodded. "I'll admit, you acted unilaterally. I can't deny that part. But what you did, you can't tell me it's the same as—as what the others did, okay? It's different. You didn't...that is, I know you didn't do it to hurt me. Even if..." He fell silent again, his hardened jaw a sign of the emotions that smoldered inside of him as he felt a flash of emptiness at the prospect of a life without her. Angel closed his eyes and uttered a quiet groan. "Even if it does hurt." He sighed and raised his eyes to meet hers again. "And just so you think that I'm not lying to you, I'm not saying that what you did doesn't hurt. Because it does. It hurts a lot. Jesus, Bren, it hurts. I can't even tell you how much this fucking hurts."

She stared at him for a very long moment, her bright blue eyes watering as she swallowed a small sob. It wasn't that she hadn't expected him to tell her that she was wrong. But, hearing him say it still hurt. Swallowing the knot that had formed in her throat, she took a breath, forcing herself to breathe before she nodded and said, "A betrayal is still a betrayal."

"No." Angel covered his eyes with his hand and drew a heavy breath. "Fuck," he muttered. He looked at her and shook his head with a quiet grunt in response to the rolling dialogue that silently raged in his mind. "You didn't...that is, this isn't. You didn't betray me, Bren. You didn't do this_—_I know you didn't do this for yourself, that you did it for me. But..._fuck_, it still hurts like a son of a bitch."

A wave of raw, sickening pain pulsed in his belly as he felt himself slipping into despair as he began to wrap his mind around what it was that she had done and what it meant for them. He winced, certain that the pain he felt in his gut was her pulling away, the threads that had tied them together for so long finally fraying as they were torn apart. As the pain tore at him, his carefully-chosen words fell away and he leaned his head back and groaned. "What is it about me that everyone who says they love me makes them end up hurting me?" he asked, his brow deeply creased as his eyes shimmered with tears. "There must be something wrong with me. I thought...you know, I really thought it would be different with you than it was with the others, Bren. That...that with you, I could finally find the happiness I'd always wanted in this world...but I guess I was wrong." He swallowed and looked away, unwilling to meet her gaze as the tears rimmed in his eyes.

Clutching the afghan tightly around her, Brennan suddenly felt very naked. Her eyes scanned the room as she looked for her clothes. She met his eyes one final time and then hastily bent to retrieve her camisole and yoga pants that had been discarded earlier in the haste to undress.

"I'm sorry," she said as she shifted the blanket so that she could pull on the clothing without revealing any of her body to him. "And, if there were any other way I could think to fix this, I would. But, I can't. So, all I can say is that I'm sorry, Angel. I'm so sorry that I hurt you."

"No," he whispered. "No...just don't. You've gotta stop sayin' you're sorry, Bren. I know you won't believe me when I tell you there's nothing I think you need to say you're sorry to me for, so, well—I mean, what's done is done. The die is cast, and we've gotta find some way to get through this, you and me. We..._both of us_...but you've gotta be strong, mmm? The way I know only you are. You're the strongest woman I've ever known. We can get through this somehow. But you've gotta help me here. We've gotta help each other, and—well, somehow make the most of the time we have left. Aye?"

She felt her heart twist all over again at his words. Looking away, she said softly, "I wouldn't undo it even if I could, so I suppose...all I can do is take comfort in the fact that I know that you'll be safe and happy and will have the life that I know you've always wanted even if it means it's away from everyone in your life."

For some reason, in that moment, she felt incredibly exposed to him, and it didn't just have to do with the fact that she wasn't wearing much clothing. Reaching down, she made a grab for the yoga pants that she'd been wearing earlier before Angel had taken them off of her. She quickly pulled them on, realizing that it was highly probable that they'd just had sex for the last time. The thought quickly sobered her, and she couldn't help but feel the sadness that had been threatening to overwhelm her since she'd made the decision to make the bargain she had to keep Angel safe all over again.

As if daring him to tell her she was wrong, Brennan looked over at Angel once she'd finished dressing, and she said, "You know, if it helps at all, you'll be happy to know that you'll be free of me after today. I'll be gone, and you'll never have to look at me with that look you have in your eyes right now that says I've broken everything that we had, everything we were." She paused, unable to help herself as a tight ball of emotion throbbed in her throat, and she needed a moment before she could continue. Choking the feelings away, when she spoke once more, her voice was a hoarse whisper as she added, "I suppose, maybe, that will be something that will be a blessing to both of us in the end."

Angel closed his eyes at hearing her anguished words, and felt his heart clench as if it were being crushed by a giant fist. _No, _he howled inside of him. _Happy? I'm not happy to be free. Not if being free means I have to give you up, if I have to lose you to be free. I never wanted that kind of free. _Finally, he brought his gaze back to meet hers with a heavy shake of his head.

"What if I don't want to be free of you, Bren?" he asked, his voice as thick with the feelings he was struggling with himself as much as she was. "Huh? After all this time, why would you think that I would ever want to be free of you? You're it for me, Bren. You have been for a long time. You're my rock, Bren. We may've lived separate lives for most of the last hundred fifty years, but we've been linked to each other no matter what. We've overlapped. You've always been my anchor, Bren. No matter what happened in my life, I always knew I could count on you. You've been the one constant, the one thing...the one person who I knew I could keep coming back to no matter what happened. But now? If that's gone? What am I supposed to do about that, huh? Now...I'm gonna lose everything, but not everything that I'm losing in my life is bad, because I'm gonna lose the one thing...the one person who I could..."

His voice trailed off and he covered his face with his hands and groaned through gritted teeth. "You were my anchor. You just severed my anchor line. I'm unmoored now. You're cutting me loose and setting me adrift. I never wanted that. This." He grunted and shook his head violently. "I don't want to lose you, Bren. I lose you, and I lose everything that's worth having. I'll have _nothing _left. _Nothing. _ You might as well have left me out there behind that slaughterhouse in Chicago and let me dust myself."

She felt the hot tears that she'd somehow managed to keep at bay, aside from a few errant ones that had escaped her overflowing tear ducts, burn down a stream on her reddened cheeks. However, Brennan refused to wipe them away or even sniffle as her eyes overfilled with the warm liquid that fell down her cheeks. "I haven't cut you loose, Angel. I swear I haven't. I-I..." Her words faltered before she added with a sniffle, "I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. And, you know that."

Angel tilted his head at her words and tried to figure out what Brennan was saying. After a moment, he said grimly, "I don't know what you mean, Bren. I'm losing you. I'm losing everything. Everything I know. Everyone I know. Everything I've made and done. All of it. It's gone." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that...the bad with the good." He stopped, tilted his head, and gave her a sad smile as he added, "And you know what, Bren? Some of it? The good parts? It was very, very good...because of you, because of us. But I'm gonna lose that—so what will I have left, huh?"

Tilting her head, she swallowed again before she finally found the ability to whisper sadly, "A piece of me." His eyes snapped to Brennan's, and she nodded at him as she saw comprehension dawn on his sad face. "You'll always have a piece of me, although after what I've done, I wouldn't blame you for wanting to use it against me before you forget that you have it."

She paused for a moment, considering the gravity and implications of the words that had just tumbled from her lips in a flood of truthful emotion as she spoke to him. Disconsolate, Brennan took a moment to think about it, and then decided that if Angel decided to finally use the Witch's Third of her soul that she'd given to him not quite a century before, that she surely deserved it.

_Let him do it_, she thought miserably. _It's the least I deserve. And, then I'll be just as broken in that way as I am in just about every other way that's possible since I'm doing this to him, to us._

Lifting her head, she sought his gaze as she said, "If that's what you really feel you need to do, I wouldn't blame you, Angel. I deserve it. I deserve that and much, much more."

"No," he said, bringing his hands up from his hips and waving them in front of his face. "Don't do this, Bren," he muttered. "What you're saying...it doesn't make any sense. Don't even think that way, alright? Just, no—"

"We made the agreement that night, Angel. I know you remember it, the terms? That night? That night when things changed forever between you and I? Our deal? It was sealed and bound for eternity, Angel. Even if I wanted to—and I don't, I swear I don't—but I can't undo it, take it back, or change your charge of it. I can't...well, the only thing I can do is not blame you if you decided to finally chose to use it against me because of what I've done to you."

He stared at her as she spoke, her words barely audible amid the loud roaring of blood in his ears. He felt his heartbeat throbbing in his chest, a sensation he still hadn't grown accustomed to since re-attaining his humanity. But that wasn't all he felt as he sat there, his mortal breaths weighed down by the gravity of what was happening to him, to the two of them. It was as if something inside of him was tugging at him, pulling him down, as if he was being held in place by some unseen force. _How can she think so little of me? I would never do that to her. Never. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. I gave her my word. How could she think that I'd ever hurt her like that, especially after everything that we've been through? _he thought. _That I would, that I could..._

He blinked as something very important suddenly occurred to him.

_Wait._

His heart fluttered at the realization as he something else hummed in his chest, vibrating deep inside of him. _Holy hell, _he cursed himself. _Fuck. How could I...I'm an idiot. _He held his breath for a moment as he stood there, letting his mind focus entirely on the murmur he felt.

It had almost an ultrasonic quality to it, the way it buzzed so faintly inside of him, that he'd grown so used to it over eighty-odd years that most of the time, he didn't notice it. But now, as he felt everything else slipping from his grasp, the humming rung louder than ever before. He felt it clench and quiver as he gazed into her tear-rimmed eyes. In between each beat of his heart, he heard it. He felt it.

_Her._

Angel exhaled the breath he'd been holding and suddenly felt a sense of relief, not merely on account of having taken another much-needed breath, but because the humming inside of him pulsed, as if it was calling out to him from within. He felt a sudden sense of peace wash over him and a warmth spread through his chest as he brought his eyes to meet hers again.

_I'm not alone, _he told himself. _I haven't been alone for over eighty years. _The presence inside twittered back as if in reply and he felt a pleasant shiver run down his spine. _And after all of this, whatever this is, I won't be alone. She'll still be with me, part of me, every day. _His cheeks flushed and his mouth fell open as he nodded at himself. _She's my center, _he told himself. _And she'll still be there, with me. She hasn't abandoned me. I can't abandon her, either. I won't lose her completely...and she has to know that maybe since I'm not losing her, maybe she won't lose me completely either. I just wish there was someway I could get her to believe that. I'm just not certain how to_—_wait. That's it._

Tilting his head, he said, "I won't betray you," Angel said slowly and gravely, unsure whether he was speaking to the woman before him, the part of her that dwelled inside of him, or both. "No," he insisted. "I'm not gonna do it." He paused, shaking his head fervently as she added, "I've done so many things that I wish I could undo. I-I guess the upshot of all this is I won't be haunted by the century and a half of destruction I wrought, huh?" He shook his head. "But, after...after Chicago, I swore to myself that I was going to take this thing you gave to me and protect it with everything I had, and to use it for some good, right? That maybe others might not know the suffering that I had made...but..."

He looked away and sighed.

"I won't betray you, Bren. I gave you my word on that, and I won't. No matter whatever happens between us? I couldn't do it even if I wanted to, so—I swear, I'll die before that happens." He reached his hand up and rubbed the sweat-damp hair on the back of his head. "Bren," he said quietly, bringing his warm brown eyes to meet her cool blue ones, each pair shimmering back at the other with brimming tears as he thought about the reason why the pain that each one of them felt had come to be in the first place. Eventually, he sighed as he saw her look at him as if he expected to say or do something that would just cause her more pain. Desperately wanting to bring her some peace, he tried to reassure her when he spoke again. "Hey," he said, his voice low and velvety as he spoke.

"What?" she asked him.

"You know," he told her. "I'm still not sure I understand why you had to do this, but I guess...I guess you thought...think that you're doing the right thing for me. But, Bren? You know what the only thing I can think that will feel right after whatever's gonna happen to me...to us happens? I'm not sure how I know it, but the part of you I'll still have? I'll keep protecting it, protect that one thing you'll leave me with...and to protect it, to protect you...I could never use it against you. I could never hurt you. So no, I won't betray you. I won't. I won't do it. No matter what. That part of you, and my own honor...that's all I'll have left after this, isn't it?"

She felt his words rip into her again, and a small sliver of rational objectivity that seemed to be watching things happen as they transpired wondered at what point numbness would set in. Shaking her head, she shook her head as she responded softly, "No, not quite. It's well...I'm not sure of all of the specifics, but you'll have a fresh start, a new life. A new family. You'll be able to have all the things that you always wanted without the burden you've had to bear in living with the legacy of what you did as Angelus." She was quiet for a minute and then said, "We both know that the Senior Partners aren't the only ones who want to hurt you, who want you dead. But, now, Angel? Now...this way...you'll be protected, and you'll have the freedom to start over without the chance of the past coming back to haunt you. And, more than that, I'll—I'll be watching over you, just in case."

A strange look came across his face as he realized that her seemingly simple words had deeper meaning. "What do you mean?" he asked her. "That is...do you know? Or will you? You'll—you'll know about me? I mean, where I'll be?" He looked down at his bare feet, wiggling his toes against the Azerbaijani carpet for a few second before glancing up again. "Who I'll be?"

"Not at first," she said vaguely, her mouth gaping open as she tried to hold the next wave of her own tears at bay. "I'm not sure, but somehow and at some point, yes, I'll see you again, and when I do, I'll know you, even if you won't know me." She stopped, a sharp look crossing her face as she added, "That minor detail rather finally confirms, I think, once and for all that I harbor sado-masochistic tendencies, I think." Angel shot her a look, and Brennan swallowed heavily as she once again became serious. "Anyway, to answer your question, no I don't know yet. I do know, because it's a part of the bargain I made, that our paths will cross. And once I know who you are then, yes, I'll watch over you. To make sure you're safe, Angel." She chewed the inside of her lip for a moment, then added as she looked up at him, "You have to know that, right? The whole reason I did all this is just because I wanted you to be safe. And to be happy.

Once again, her words renewed the gaping wound in his chest that he'd felt since she'd told him what she'd done. Looking at her, his brow creased in hurt, he shook his head slightly. "Oh, God, Bren," Angel sighed, rolling his lips between his teeth and clenching his eyes shut. After a long moment of silence, he opened his eyes and blinked at her several times. "I would've risked my life to keep you in it," he said. "You know, Bren, if you'd have asked me. If you'd asked me what I wanted. I would've done whatever I had to do to keep you in my life. _Anything, _alright? Whatever I had to do, I'd have done it, Bren. But I guess that really doesn't matter anymore because you've did this all on your own, Bren. And, well, I think that's something...maybe the one thing that bothers me the most? Because now, with how things are gonna be, you gave me up...or, well, I guess you made me give you up. I'd have given up everything, Bren, to keep you if I knew what was coming down the pike. I would've...whatever I had to do. But now I give up everything, and I lose you anyway. If that's not fucking irony I don't know what is. God, I fucking hate irony! It really blows when it's your life and not a story or a movie or a show on TV." He shoved his hands into the pockets of his still-unbuttoned jeans and looked up at her with a pained expression. "I just wish...I really wish that you'd come to me, Bren. I know...I know in my heart that we could've figured this out...some way to fix things. I just—"

"We tried it your way for a year, Angel," Brennan said, as she thought back on the first time she'd seen him after he'd returned after L.A. was restored from its year in hell. "It didn't..." Her voice cracked as she shook her head, choked down some air, and then tried again. "It didn't work. You know your way wasn't working, Angel."

"Now, wait," he said with a frown, shaking his head. "It hasn't been a whole year, Bren. It's only been six or seven months, tops."

"Even still," she sighed. "It was long enough to know that it wasn't working, Angel. It was long enough to know that as relieved and happy and thankful as I felt that day you came back...when you showed up on my doorstep after having been gone for a year when L.A. was in hell..." She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. "The happiness I felt that day, Angel, it wasn't enough to wash away the pain I felt during all those months when I thought I'd lost you."

"Bren," he said with a frown as he took a step towards her. Cocking his head to the side as he pouted his lips sympathetically, blinking away his own tears as he felt his heart ache for the suffering she endured when he was gone. He watched her, hunched over on the sofa, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, and he could feel the grief rolling off of her in waves that resonated deep inside of him. "Please," he said, sitting down in the old leather side chair, just a few feet from her as he reached his hand out and touched her shoulder. "Listen...work with me here, okay? I don't know how long we have, but I do know that however long it is that I don't want to...I-I just...you know? Let's make the most of what we've got left. Let's not concentrate on the bad stuff. Let's just focus on the good things."

A look of hesitant hope flared in Brennan's eyes as she said softly, "But, how?"

He hesitated for a moment and then said, "You said that you were happy on that day I came and found you when I got back. So, can't we concentrate on that? Because that was a good day, wasn't it?"

Brennan paused for a moment, remembering the day in question, and then she slowly nodded her head. "Yes, it was a good day, Angel. A very good day."

_She was shaken from her sleep by an impatient knock on her door. Annoyed at the presumption and impertinence of someone who'd dare to rouse her from her slumber at seven o'clock on a Saturday morning, it was with a furrowed brow and a distinctly unfeminine growl that she stumbled out of bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she shuffled from her bedroom towards her foyer, and answered the door. Brennan was only semi-awake when she didn't slow down to look at the peephole, but rather unlatched the deadbolt and, uttering a frustrated grunt, swung the door open._

_For several long moments, she stared at her visitor, her mouth gaping open in obvious surprise. _

"_Angel?" she said quietly, her voice hesitant, as if she were bracing herself for the possibility that the figure standing on her doorstep was actually an illusion of some kind. He stood there in dark, snug-fitting acid-washed jeans and a charcoal-gray button-down shirt so dark it nearly appeared black, its slightly rumpled appearance making it obvious he'd machine-washed it rather than taking it to the cleaners. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of a casually-weathered black leather jacket. His hair was neatly trimmed to a short fade on the back and sides, but with a couple of inches left on top, which he'd styled, as usual, with too much gel. He looked up at her with expectant eyes as he opened his mouth to speak._

"_Bren," he responded in a quiet voice, his eyebrows raised as he took a hesitant step towards her. _

_His dark eyes widened as he took in the sight of her, her slender, shapely shoulders set off against the thin spaghetti straps of her camisole as her ivory skin glowed in the clear morning light. He knew he'd woken her up, because her pale eyes glittered back at him without eyeliner or mascara, and her cheeks still had faint creases from the pillowcase. It reminded him of all the mornings he'd woken up next to her, and how beautiful she looked first thing in the morning, and he smiled at the thought of how sorely he'd missed that in the year he'd been gone...during all the time he'd been away from her. _

_Still stunned, as a reflex to his movement, Brennan opened the door all the way and, after a moment, stepped back into her apartment so that he could enter. He reluctantly broke eye contact just long enough so that he could walk inside. She closed the door behind him with a heavy thunk and stood in her foyer, a faint smile on her lips as she watched him scan her apartment in the way that only he ever did, as if he were trying to satisfy himself that there weren't hidden dangers lurking in the dark corners of the rooms. After two and a half centuries spent evading Slayers, and decades battling the dark forces of demonry, his vigilance was second nature, as deeply ingrained a part of him as the sinews of his ever-living body. Angel's eyes narrowed as he held his hand over his brow, temporarily dazed by the bright morning light as it shone through the gauzy white drapes that hung over her living room windows. Even as he took an instinctive step back, Brennan was too stunned to realize that some of the early morning sunlight had briefly touched his skin before he receded to the apartment's shadows._

"_I'm...I-I...it's..." His stammering fell silent as he glanced around the room before his eyes finally came back to rest on her. They held each other's intense gaze for a long time before his face broke into a smile of relief. "Oh, God," he said. "I missed you, Bren. I missed you so much."_

_She continued to look at him, hesitant to believe that what she was seeing and hearing was real. "I-I didn't know what had happened to you," she said, as she took a tentative step towards him. He was healthy, his muscles strong, his cheeks full and his skin still the same warm olive color it'd always been, but his chocolate brown eyes seemed perpetually tired, like that of a person who'd spent year after year working the graveyard shift. "It's been...God, Angel. So long. I-I...I didn't know what to do," she said haltingly. "I looked for you...in more ways than one. For months, I did, but you were just...gone. There was no evidence, no trace as to what might've happened, where you might've gone or why. I couldn't find you. I looked and looked, but no matter where I tried to find you, I couldn't. It was just like, one day I woke up...and I-I...I could barely feel you anymore. You felt so far away, and the more I tried to get to you, the harder I tried to find you, the less I could feel you, sense you. I didn't...I-I just..."_

_Her voice trailed off as he finally gave in to the urge he'd felt, which he'd felt as soon as she opened the door**,** to touch her and feel her, to take her in his arms and feel her warm, supple body in his and thus to know she was really there, alive and waiting for him and that he wasn't dreaming the tortuous and repeated dreamy nightmare he'd had often had while L.A. had been consigned to hell, the one of him finally coming home to her and finding her waiting for him, but waking up each time before he could actually touch her. He quickly breached the small distance between them, closing it with a few short steps before he reached out and cupped her face between his hands as he pressed his mouth to hers and kissed her. She felt his tongue skim across the cleft between her lips, begging for admission, and after moment of hesitation, she parted her lips and moaned softly as she felt his tongue invade her mouth, and she was grateful for the invasion. _

_As he kissed her, it was as if the world instantly turned right side up again after having spun on its axis for the last few months. Brennan felt a burst of happiness and gratitude and contentment well in her chest at the realization as she molded her warm and soft body against his. _

Thank you_, a small voice whispered in her mind. _Oh, thank you.

_For his part, Angel felt awash in relief—relieved that she was safe and well after he spent a year watching the minions of Wolfram & Hart flatten Los Angeles, butcher countless of its citizens, and mercilessly terrorize those who'd been lucky enough to survive the slaughter—and immeasurably happy to feel her in his arms again. Each second he felt her in his arms, her breasts crushed against his chest, he felt more and more energized, recharged as if the constancy of her affections renewed his hope in the world. His mouth grasped at hers as his tongue twirled against hers and withdrew, then resumed the wet, sweet chase as he traced the edge of her tongue with his before breaking off the kiss._

Oh, God, _he thought, half-tempted to cross himself in thanks as he reluctantly pulled his mouth away from hers. _She's alive and happy, _he grinned,_ and if she's kissin' me like that I mustn't be in too much of a bad spot. Thank you. Thank fuckin' God.

"_I missed you," he said, after they'd finally broken apart. His voice was low and rough as he looked at her, his warm brown eyes having suddenly darkened to the color of tar as his nostrils flared, and he smiled happily at her. "I'm sorry you worried about me," he added, placing his hand on her hip for a moment before he leaned in again to recapture her lips with his. He grunted in frustration when she tried to pull away with a crooked half-grin on her face. "No," he sighed as he moved in again, pressing her against the door. "Need you," he murmured in the seconds before he kissed her again. _

_He felt his blood burn hot for her as his tongue again swept into her sweet mouth, and he swore that he was drowning in her, in the all-encompassing feel of her, and he was all too happy to let himself go without putting up a single second of resistance. In that moment, he kissed her with everything he had to give, as if he could—with his lips and tongue—get her to understand how desperately he'd missed her in the year that he'd been gone. He leaned into her with his hip, grinding into her with a grunt as he felt her moan into their kiss, and his passion-soaked mind flickered briefly as he knew she felt his growing arousal each time he pressed against her thigh. His lips clutched at hers hungrily. He felt her tongue toy with his for a few seconds before she pulled her lips from his again, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. _

_"God," he groaned, unable to break eye contact with her, as he grinned at her with the desire he felt clearly written on his face. "I want you so much." He pulled her mouth back to his and kissed her again, deeply if briefly as his own chest heaved, then sighed, "I missed you so much, I nearly lost my mind, Bren." Angel kissed her again, nibbling on her lower lip before pulling away again. "I thought about you all the time. All the time. Every night before I fell asleep. Every morning when I woke up, and every minute in between. Every day. My heart...every bit of me ached for you." He leaned in and kissed the side of her neck, taking a moment to breathe in a deep whiff of the smell of her—her sweat, and the clean apple and tea tree oil scent of her shampoo. "I missed you. And this...so much. So much, Bren."_

_Angel's hand fell away from Brennan's jaw and skimmed down, his fingers tracing a path along the side of her neck, over the place beneath her ear where he'd fed on her sweet blood on more than one passionate and lustful occasion over the years, over the curve of her shoulder, and down along her delicate collarbone to the cleft between her breasts. He broke off their kiss and bent his head lower, placing his mouth on the notch at the base of her neck, his lips ghosting over the soft, gently pulsing skin before moving lower, her forefingers sliding underneath the top hem of her camisole to touch the sensitive skin on the top of her breast, his palm brushing over her nipple as she gasped at the contact. She felt his fingertips touch her bosom, and as she felt a pulse of wetness between her legs, she knew that her rational self-control became more and more frayed with each passing second that his hands and lips touched her._

"_This," he sighed into her ear again, a soft whisper. "You. Missed this. Us. So much...so very much."_

_After a minute, when she felt as if either her legs would give out or that she'd finally give in to consenting what was rapidly becoming Angel screwing her up against the front door of the apartment, she reached out and put a hand on his cheek._

"_Wait," she said softly, the breathlessness she felt catching in her throat as a throaty whisper._

"_Huh?" he asked, smacking his lips as his glassy eyes stared at her._

"_Wait," she repeated. "Please. Wait a minute—"_

"_Why?" he breathed, punctuating his question with a sharp twist of his hip against her pelvis. Brennan could feel the hardness of his erection pressing through his jeans. She bit her lip as she struggled not to give in. "I want you," he groaned. "Oh, God, Bren. I need to feel you. Please?"_

_As soon as the words of his plea were out of his mouth, any hesitation or regrets or inclination to say 'no' suddenly flew out of Brennan's head. "Oh, fine," she nodded. "Fuck it." She reached out, wrapping her hands behind his head, as she pressed her body against his again._

_He felt her fingers thread through his hair as her fingertips brushed over his scalp, and his mouth fell open with a breathy sigh._

_"Ohh, Bren," he murmured as she pressed into him, the bottom hem of her blue spaghetti-strap camisole riding up to expose the soft skin of her belly as Angel's broad hands fanned across her back, caressing every inch of its ivory plane as she pulled his lips back to hers. "God," he sighed, his lips brushing against hers. "You have no idea how bad I've—"_

"_No," she murmured, a quiet growl of frustration punctuating her utterance as she tried again to silence him with her kiss. "Actually, I think I do."_

_This time, as her soft, vanilla-scented lips grasped hungrily for his, he fell silent—or mostly silent, any articulable thoughts he had in that moment dissolving into a stream of moans, sighs, groans, murmurs, and quiet grunts—and surrendered himself to the waterfall of feelings and sensations that inundated him as he felt her velvet tongue twirl against his. The soft pads of his fingertips clawed sensually at her lower back, and his thumbs pressed into her sides as he turned his head, separating himself from her kiss as he dragged his kiss-swollen lips across the long line of her square jaw, pressing ever-wetter and more insistent kisses until he reached her earlobe. She'd taken out her dangly earrings the night before when she prepared for bed, leaving her tender, fleshy earlobes open to possession by his worshiping mouth. He pressed a kiss on the flat space in front of her ear, she sucked in a sharp breath as she felt him take her earlobe between his teeth and nip gently. _

"_Oh, my God, Angel," she gasped as he nipped again, harder this time, letting her feel the sting for a fleeting moment before soothing it away with a quick stroke of his tongue. _

_Angel captured her earlobe between his lips and pulled at it, sucking gently before releasing it and resuming his mouth's explorations. "You," he said in a low voice as he slowly kissed his way down her neck, each kiss slightly more demanding and sucking at her flesh a bit harder than the one that came before. _

_Brennan raised her chin and turned her head a bit to the side, and a low growl sounded from his chest as he kissed her neck, his balls tightening as he felt her murmur of pleasure vibrate against his lips. _

"_You're...so...much more...beautiful...than...I remember..." His words fell in scattered mutters of mumbled syllables as he again found himself losing interest in anything that kept him from devouring her flesh. _

_Brennan arched her head back and sighed as his lips worked their way across her collarbone. "Angel," she said, unsure in that moment whether she was protesting or encouraging him, although her body, growing more flushed and warmer with each of his kisses, rebelled at the notion of doing anything to stop him in that moment. "I-I..."_

"_No," he grunted, sliding his hands up her side and hooking his thumbs around the bottom hem of her camisole and tugging it upwards, taking a half-step backwards as he saw two pale half-moons peeking out from underneath the garment. His mouth watered as another slight movement revealed the bottom edges of her dusky pink nipples._

_Brennan felt the cool touch of the air-conditioned room on her exposed flesh and that, along with the feral look she saw in Angel's eyes when he finally tore his gaze from her tits to meet her eyes, made her areolae tighten. She closed her eyes for a moment as she felt herself get even more wet thanks to his touch and then opened them again as she lost herself for several long moments in her lover's eyes, their warm brown color having darkened to that of pine tar and shimmering in the bright morning light that shone through her living room window. He licked his lips and blinked back at her, but said nothing, shrugging a little before he dipped his head down and, pulling her camisole up to reveal the full glory of her hardened nipples, palmed one of her breasts and brought it to his lips. _

"_Oh shit, Angel," she groaned as she felt his tongue draw a wet circle around the point of her nipple and his lips close around her pebbled flesh. _

_She swallowed hard, reaching her hands around to the back of his waistband and grabbed at his his shirttail, trying to jerk it out of his jeans as he suckled her. He drew her nipple into his mouth in a hard suck that sent a sharp jolt of pleasure searing up her spine, down her legs and, most powerfully, to the very core of her want. She looked down to watch him but all she could see was his shock of dark brown hair, casually styled in wisps with some sort of crisp styling product that he'd taken to using the last few years. _

_Brennan arched her head back again and moaned as he sucked hard at her tit, making her nipples ache and her core throb with want of him. After a minute, he pulled his mouth away, raising his pitch-dark eyes to meet hers for a fleeting second before he brought his mouth to her other breast. In that short interval when she was free from the demanding touch of his lips, she fisted his black button-down shirt and with a couple of sharp tugs, jerked it free of his jeans. She let her hands roam his sides and began to fan her fingers over the ropy surface of his muscular back when she suddenly narrowed her eyes and gasped._

_After suckling her other nipple for only a few seconds, Angel's impatience got the best of him and, giving her one last flick of his tongue, he let her pebbled, rosy flesh fall from his lips. He palmed her breast with his hand and squeezed it, then grunted he raised his head to meet her gaze again, then thrust his hip into her and crushed his mouth into hers. She murmured into his kiss, but as his mouth grasped at hers, her words were swallowed up in an eager dance of dueling tongues. She reached her hand up and clawed gently at his faintly-stubbled jaw as his mouth worked at hers feverishly. He kissed her and kissed her again, deeply, as if in kissing her he sought to crawl into her and immerse himself in the taste of her. Angel's hands squeezed her hips a couple of times before he grunted and slid his hands under the elastic waistband of Brennan's yoga pants. _

_His heart began to race as he realized there was nothing underneath but her gloriously smooth skin. His fingers fanned over the swell of her hips as he heard the blood began to roar ever louder in his ears, and he couldn't help himself as his thumbs swiped towards her navel, over the gentle curve of her belly and brushed over the crisp fringe of curls at the apex of her thighs. He felt his racing pulse begin to thunder in his chest as he abandoned her hips and threaded his fingers through her curly hair even as his tongue tangled with hers. His jeans become painfully snug all of a sudden as his forefinger brushed over a dewy moisture along her cleft. _

_Brennan jerked her hips against his hand as she felt him move closer and closer to her desperately swollen flesh. A voice in the back of her head whispered that this was all too fast, and that after their long the separation, all of her anxiety, all of his silence—she should catch her breath, re-establish a level set, ease back into things, and take things between them slow—but her body, flushed with arousal and crackling with desire, wanted none of it. Or rather, it wanted all of him, buried as snugly inside of her as quickly as she could. And, as she felt his tongue ravaging her mouth and his fingers dive between her legs and skim over her most sensitive flesh, the last of her resistance crumbled with a soft whimper and a pleasurable sigh._

_Reaching down, she pawed at his belt, pulling at the tongue and sliding it out from under his belt loop and jerking it free of the buckle. It took a couple of seconds for Angel's mind to catch up with Brennan's hands, but as soon as he felt her fingers plucking open the button of his jeans, his own hands retreated from between her legs and flew up, one to cup her jaw and pull her lips back to his and the other slamming clumsily against the wall to help give him balance as he felt the room begin to spin around him. He kissed her again, pressing his mouth against hers so hard his own teeth bruised the inside of his lip but he couldn't help himself. Having been without her so long, he wanted to drown in her. She opened her mouth to him as if by reflex, and his tongue surged into her sweet warmth again, their lips grasping and reaching for one another in undulating waves of want. As his mind swirled in the dizzying sensation of kissing her, his tongue exploring the silky depths of her mouth the way another part of him ached to explore another part of her, he found himself growing light-headed. He opened his eyes and saw her blue ones, heavy-lidded but bright, looking back at him as he tried to blink away the white dots that twinkled at the edge of his field of vision. _

_Brennan unzipped him with a sharp _fwippp_ sound, and he felt her thumbs hook around the waistband of his jeans as she began to ease them over his bony hips. It had been so long since he'd felt her touch, he was afraid he might lose it right then and there as she touched him, but while his balls hitched as her short fingernails scraped over his hip, his dark eyes rolled back in his head. As he let her again swallow him into his kiss, he felt a felt sharp burning in his chest as tiny pricks of light began to dot his field of vision. His head involuntarily wobbled from side to side pressed his hand against the door for balance as his knees nearly gave out, forcing him to stumble a couple of steps back. _

"_Fuck," he coughed, his chest heaving as each of his panting breaths crashed into his burning lungs. "I'm...ahh..." _

_He couldn't speak as he bent over, his jeans unzipped and gaping open as they hung on his hips. He stood there with his eyes closed, his hands propped on his thighs as each desperate breath came in a gulp, wondering when the floor would stop spinning beneath him. He didn't raise his head to look at her, too focused in that moment at trying to breathe to do much of anything else. After a few seconds, when his head had stopped reeling long enough to realize what was happening, he raised his head and met her eyes._

_She stared back at him with a blank, nonplussed expression, and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he cursed himself for being an idiot. For a hundred fifty years, he'd been her lover and had been with countless women before her. But it had been two hundred fifty years since he'd last been with a woman and had to consider pacing himself long enough to take a breath now and then. But that morning, he'd been so single-mindedly focused on the feel and the taste of her, devouring her mouth as she shucked his pants off, he didn't think about anything other than being inside of her and feeling the incredible warmth of her envelop him like hot liquid silk. Angel needed to feel her, and in that moment, he wanted nothing—not clothing, not the foyer wall, not his own newfound need to breathe—to impede him in putting himself where he wanted to be._

"_Are you alright?" she asked cautiously, her eyebrow sharply quirked as she watched him, still hunched over not quite certain what to make of his strange behavior._

_He arched his back and drew a deep breath, then stood up to his full height, wobbling a bit as he did. "I'm fine," he croaked._

"_You don't look fine," she said. "You look like you're about ready to pass out."_

_Angel shook his head and scowled at her, taking another couple of stumbling steps backwards towards the kitchen. "I'm...fine," he insisted, his words separated by panting breaths. "Just...need...a..." He coughed. "A...drink of...that is, do you have...maybe some...water, please?"_

"_Are you sure?" she asked him, visibly flummoxed by the request. In all the years she'd known him, she'd seen him drink tea, ale, whiskey and, of course, blood of various sorts. But never, not once, had he ever asked for a drink of water. Her eyes scanned his somewhat changed appearance and she shrugged off her puzzlement, wondering if this was just some sort of new thing he'd picked up during his long absence._

"_I'm fine," he nodded at her. "Promise, Bren. I...just...need...some water." _

_After a minute and his continued reassurances that he was alright but that a glass of water wouldn't be amiss, Brennan watched him rebutton his jeans and buckle his belt with a regretful upward glance. She gave him a strange look in return, but nodded her understanding. The pair walked from the foyer into the kitchen, and she went to get him the water he'd asked for. She looked over her shoulder, her brow knit in worry, as she saw him follow her on unsteady feet. After she'd retrieved a glass and filled it with ice-cold water from the refrigerator, she turned around and handed him the glass. _

_With a shaky hand, Angel accepted it. "Thanks," he told her before he reached out and downed the glass's contents in a few gulps._

_Worry still writ all over her face, she asked him, "You sure you're okay?"_

"_Yeah," he nodded, once he'd drained the contents of the glass. "I-I...I'll be fine. I'm just...I need to just stop being stupid."_

_Brennan studied his face for a long moment and then nodded. "Okay," she said. Her voice faltered before she asked, "What else can I do? Can I get you anything else?"_

_He blinked at her a few times and then asked, "Maybe some more water?" She nodded as she took his empty glass and refilled it. The pair were silent as he accepted the refill and guzzled it in much the same way he had the first one's contents. When he was finished, and had set the empty glass back on the counter, he repeated, "Thanks."_

"_You're welcome," she told him. "As long as you're sure you're okay."_

"_I am," Angel told her. "Just...I'm fine, Bren. I promise."_

"_Right," she said, a edge of doubt still clinging to her words. After they spent another minute staring at one another, she swore she saw a look in his eye suggesting that perhaps he was more recovered than she thought as she noted a glint that warned her he was about to make another grab for her. Still a bit worried as to what might happen if and when he did, Brennan made a preemptive strike to divert him as she asked, "Tea?" Finding that there was still a couple of cups' worth of water in her tea kettle, she turned the burner on, and reached into the cabinet over the stove to fetch the box of Irish Breakfast tea bags. "I think...yes, I think it's a good idea to make a pot of tea. I think I'm feeling like having some just about now."_

_He blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear away the haze that clouded his mind.__"Having some?" Angel shook his head in confusion, still somewhat dazed from the sudden rush of want that washed over him in the wake of their passionate kissing and groping. "But I thought we were_—_wait_, _what?" he choked. "Having some of what?"_

_As if she didn't even notice his flummoxed behavior, she answered his question without much of an added response beside conveying the requested information to him. "Tea, Angel," she said, nodding at him. "I'm going to make myself a cup of tea. I-I...that is, would you like some...tea?" She bit back a smile as she saw his dark eyebrows furrowed as his narrowed brown eyes blinked as if he had just woken up. His sweat-damp brow creased and uncreased the way she'd seen Angel do countless times before, and which signaled that he was either on the verge of a brooding attack or a stream-of-consciousness ramble of Joycean proportions, both of which she sorely wanted to avoid. "I think...maybe a good, hot cup of tea might do us both some good right now, don't you?"_

"_Oh, uhhh, well, uhhh—yeah," he stammered. He blinked a couple of times and shook his head, puzzled at how she could shift from breathily moaning his name when he kissed and stroked her in the foyer to casually proposing they break for tea time in the space of about 2.2 seconds like it was nothing out of the ordinary. More importantly, he was still grappling with why she'd even want __tea__ when she could have him after everything that had just happened, setting aside any sense of nostalgia for the old sentiments of British imperial civility that she'd once embraced. He scratched the back of his head, shrugged, and not certain what other response he could give her except to say no_—_fuck the tea so they could back to fucking one another_—_he muttered, "I guess." He quirked his eyebrow and cocked his head to the side as he watched her arrange the tea bags in their respective mugs—one bag for one mug and two for the other—as the water in the kettle began to simmer with a mild hissing noise that punctuated the process._

_As she began to prepare the tea, Angel felt his stomach rumble as he realized how long it had been since he'd had anything to eat, the breakfast croissant he'd eaten on the plane that morning several hours distant in his digestion's memory. Going to the fridge, he opened it up, and asked over his shoulder, "You, ummm...don't have any snacks I could munch on maybe? I'm starving."_

_Shooting him a strange look, Brennan said slowly, "I don't have any blood, but, uhh..if you want I could try to transfigure some."_

_Reaching inside the refrigerator, Angel's eyes widened as he saw a half-empty tub of salsa that was labeled as 'spicy-hot,' and he smirked as he silently considered what other spicy-hot delicacies—namely, the tall, curvy one standing behind him—he might be able to feast on before the sun crested in the sky. Blinking away the thought, he made a grab for the salsa, withdrew it and looked at Brennan happily as he gestured with the container. "Hey, Bren? You have any chips?"_

_Arching an eyebrow at his strange question, Brennan wordlessly pointed at the cabinet that was to his left. "There's a bag of Tostitos in there," she answered._

_As if she'd said some set of magic words, he gave her a toothy grin before he walked over to the cabinet in question. By the time that the kettle began to whistle, Brennan had watched incredulously as Angel more or less inhaled the remnants of the salsa tub before he moved on to the unopened container of red pepper hummus she had in the fridge. Apparently getting bored with the tortilla chips, he switched to small pita rounds by the time he'd downed about a quarter of the hummus. Amazed, Brennan watched as he reached inside and pulled out a glass bottle of pink lemonade singles with which she kept her fridge stocked. Once he drank the entire bottle in about three gulps, he set the glass bottle down on the counter with a loud clink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then gave her a large grin._

"_That was pretty good," he said._

"_Pretty good?" Brennan asked in abject disbelief. _

_Of course, over the years, she'd seen him as both Angelus and Angel consume glasses of wine, pints of ale or stout, shots of whiskey, countless cups of coffee and tea, and even an occasional donut (he had a strong preference for the powdered, raspberry-filled kind, which indulgence, while rare, almost always resulted in a dry-cleaning bill). However, she'd never seen him do what he'd just done_—_go on a stereotypical male food binge_—_in all the time she'd known him. And, of course, given how rare it was that she was surprised, especially by Angel, it took her a moment to recover from her astonishment._

_Nodding, apparently not noticing the more than slightly bewildered look that graced Brennan's face, he took a step towards her. "I kinda want something sweet though, now," he waggled his eyebrows at her expectantly as he ran his tongue suggestively along the underside of his front teeth._

_Not certain if he meant her or real food, Brennan answered, "There are some Reese's Peanut Butter cups in the freezer."_

_Angel's eyes widened in happiness. "Well, hey. How about that? They're not donuts, but that would be pretty good. Yeah, that's be pretty good, I think." He paused and then looked at her as he said, "What? Is this your emergency chocolate stash or something?" _

_Unable to help herself, Brennan chuckled at him with a small shake of her head, "Yes. Something like that."_

_Angel snorted, then said, "Good to see you're finally fessing up to being a closet sugar junkie because, between you and me, lass, we both know that you've always liked sweet things, huh?" His eyes darted back and forth from the freezer to the tea kettle that was gently whistling on the stovetop. "You know," he said. "Chocolate is nice and all, but since we're having tea, it seems...well, I'm thinking I don't want to ruin the mood with the Reese's PB cups. So I think it'd be great if you had something more fittin' for tea time." He paused for a moment, choosing his words carefully, as he remembered how Brennan had gone off like a Roman candle the last time he'd mentioned 'cookies' and unintentionally set off a chain-reaction tirade about Buffy and unbaked cookie dough since he'd long ago explained to her what the inside joke between he, the Slayer, and cookies was. _

"_You wouldn't happen have any good Irish biscuits to go with that nice Irish tea, by chance?" he asked. "I'd die for some Jacob's biscuits with my tea."_

_Brennan arched a quizzical eyebrow, trying to remember the last time she heard her vampire lover ask for solid food in light of all the other things he'd just scarfed down his throat like he was a starving man eating at a banquet for the first time in months. Glancing down at an otherwise unremarkable part of her kitchen counter, she considered the point for a moment, then shrugged and shook her head._

"_I might have some Walkers shortbread in the pantry," she said. "It's Scottish, I know, but beggars can't be choosers, right?"_

"_Walkers?" Angel groaned as he scowled lightly. "Ugh."_

"_What?" Brennan asked. "What's wrong with Walkers?"_

"_Nothing," Angel said quickly. "You're right. I s'pose it's better than nothing, but at the risk of bringing up an old point of debate, neither English nor Scottish shortbread or biscuits have anything on a proper Irish biscuit."_

"_Yes," Brennan said as she walked over and opened the pantry. Scanning the shelf full of cereal boxes, her eyes finally settled on a box on the far end of the shelf with a red and black tartan design. "I know your opinion on all things Irish, Angel. However, this is all I've got. But, see?" Turning the box over, she added, "It's fresh and unopened, even. Will that be good enough?"_

"_Aye," he replied with a smile. "I suppose it could be worse since you're not trying to shove a box of McVities down my throat like you used to." He shuddered at the thought of the tasteless digestives. "But Walkers—at least they're Scottish, you know. Fellow Celts, even if they tucked into bed with the English—"_

_Brennan couldn't help but snort at his familiar rant. Interrupting him, she said, "So says the Irishman who's been making it his business to spend as much of the last hundred fifty years as he could in an Englishwoman's bed."_

"_Touché," he said with a toothy, open-mouthed grin, flashing his eyebrows and narrowing his brown eyes which flickered with amusement._

"_Never mind the fact that you wore a British uniform when you were in the Royal Engineers in the Great War—" Brennan continued, not quite willing to let him off the hook so easily. _

"_Okay fine, alright?" he snickered, holding his hands up in supplication. "You've made your point, lass. Scottish biscuits it is."_

"_Mmmm," she murmured with a crooked smirk on her lips as she opened the box of shortbread cookies and then lifted her eyes to his. "I always get the assortment," she said, her voice dropping a half-octave into a velvety, husky register. "Mmm...butterscotch, honey, chocolate chip, plain butter rounds, of course, and...oh, and my favorite..." She paused and met his questioning stare with a lusty flash of her eyebrows._

_Angel narrowed his eyes and craned his neck to get a better look at the box. "What's your favorite?" he asked when she remained unusually quiet._

_Her smirk broke into a broad smile once he prompted her even as she heard the simmering water inside the kettle begin to show the first signs that it had reached a boil. With a quick glance at the stove, she turned to him and answered with an arched eyebrow. "I think it would be a tie between the fruit rounds or...the fingers." She hesitated for a moment, and then told him with a sly smile, "Of course, if I was forced to make a choice, I'd probably say my most favorite are the fingers."_

"_You like the fingers best?" he asked with a skeptical edge to his voice. He felt a faint twitter at the base of his spine and a tingling in his own fingertips at the thought of what kind of magic his brand of fingers could do to her. _You say you like the fingers best, _he smirked, _but I think you like other things best. As a matter of fact, I know so. I think I just need to remind you of that fact. So gimme a chance, and I'll prove it to ya again, you cheeky lass. _He cleared his throat and wondered how soon he'd get a chance to let his fingers loose on her. _

"_Yes," she nodded at him, completely straight-faced. "So?"_

_"You've got to be kidding, right?" he coughed. "I can't remember you, ummm, bein' satisfied with a, uhh, just a wee little nibble. Right?" He rolled his shoulder back with a suggestive grin and said, "You've always had a pretty, ehh, hearty appetite. Nah, I can't remember the last time you were satisfied with, heh, just fingers."_

_"Just fingers?" she snickered, knowing that he had now picked up on her game. Still, not quite willing to let him have this one quite yet, ever the stubborn woman, she persisted."Angel," she said with a tone of feigned chastising. "We're not talking about the main course here. Just a little something to whet one's appetite, as it were. And to offset the tea's natural...well, spice, with something a bit creamy and buttery that leaves a certain sweetness on the tongue afterwards." _

_His eyebrows flew up at hearing her words. "Sweetness?" He felt his groin tighten and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he watched her intently and thought of something else that was creamy that he'd like to see on her tongue in short order besides the Walker's biscuits that she'd properly refer to with the term 'sweetness.'_

_The faint tingle that had seconds earlier flickered at the base of his spine suddenly flashed and sent a jolt of desire all the way to the tips of his toes as he thought of the night she'd sucked him to sweet oblivion in his office in Los Angeles while Lorne dozed in the corner of the room. He'd thought about that night a hundred times or more during the year he'd been hell with the rest of Los Angeles, leaning back in his bed and stroking the edge off his frustrations as he remembered the way the tip of her cute little tongue had darted out to lick a tiny drop of his pearly come off the corner of her mouth._

"_Well, yes," she said, give him a look as she kept her face deadpanned. "What?" she asked him. As his brown eyes twinkled mischievously at her, she almost gave it up when she added, "Is there something wrong with that? Shouldn't a woman such as myself be allowed an occasional indulgence to satisfy her sweet tooth?" Lifting her eyebrows to him, she knew she was almost giving herself away as she continued with a sly smile, "Particularly when the opportunity presents itself from time to time?"_

_Angel's brow knit low over his flickering brown eyes as his jaw shifted from one side to the other. "The opportunity?" he said edgily, shifting his weight from one hip to the other as he felt a sharp tugging sensation low in his gut at the thought of getting an opportunity after enduring a whole year without feeling her around him._

_Brennan laughed. "Of course," she snickered. "Sadly, it's been a fair while since I've been able to enjoy the sort of Irish confection I enjoy most. Too long, really." She barely missed a beat as she arched an eyebrow at him and continued, "But, given the chance, I'd gladly indulge myself until I had my fill, particularly when I seem to have unexpectedly come into possession of a supply of said dessert that's been out of stock for me for far too long."_

_He rolled his eyes and sighed. "You're teasing me, woman," he said with a touch of mock exasperation in his voice._

"_Possibly," she replied vaguely, turning her back to retrieve a pair of tea and saucer sets from the cupboard and, from the drawer, a couple of teaspoons. _

"_You know," he said as he watched her prep the tea cups. "I missed this about you while I was gone—the constant poking. Poke, poke, poke. I missed it...sort of." He rolled his eyes in an exaggerated way as he watched her struggle in vain to suppress a smirk. "You keep me on my toes," he continued with a grin. "Ya know, with all the pokin' and teasin', tweakin' and proddin' you've always given me. It's like a sport between us, isn't it?" His grin faded and he pouted his lips a little. "I know it's been a while and all, an' ya missed gettin' to tease the way ya always did, an' I'll grant you I'm a bit rusty when it comes to your teasing...though, I was always playin' checkers to your chess anyway when it came to all that, but maybe you'll be able to cut me a little slack here just for a little bit, hmmm? I mean, I know you've fallen back into step and taken on a fine form like it's an old hat trick for you, but seeing as how I just got home from spending a year in hell? Maybe, just this once, you could be nice, huh?" _

"_Hmmm," she said noncommittally, snapping her fingers as if to remind herself of something. She reached up and pulled a small porcelain creamer from another cupboard, then went into the fridge to fill it with whole milk. She yanked the tea bags from the diner-style mugs she'd put them in and gently tucked them into the porcelain teacups even as she lifted her eyes to meet his playfully. "I don't know about that. If I'm too nice, you might not respect me, and it also might get around. Then, where would my reputation be." She stopped, her eyes dancing with a barely contained amusement, as she added, "Besides, we don't want to make things too easy for you now, do we?"_

_Shaking his head in slight besetment, he muttered to himself, "What an exasperating pain in the ass."_

"_What's that, Angel?" she asked, pretending that she hadn't heard him clearly, even though they both knew she had._

_Not one to let her know she'd ever gotten the better of him—even though she had many, many times over the years—he replied quickly, "Nothing."_

_At this, Brennan shot him another look that made it clear she was just as on to his game as he was on to hers, but remained quiet. The comfortable silence wafted between the pair as Angel continued to watch her as she prepared the tea service. However, eventually, he broke the silence with a chuckle. _

_As he watched her, his body reminded him impatiently of what it wanted, and while he tried to ignore for the moment the arousal he felt which hadn't faded from his flesh, he reflected on her teasing and double-entendre. "Ya know, Bren," he said with jest, his eyes surveying the apple-shaped curve of her bottom as she fussed with the tea service. "I never really thought you were into the sex and food thing," he said. "The whole props and stuff? I mean, uhh, I know I've been gone a while and some things might've changed, but you aren't...into that now?" He raised an eyebrow, wondering briefly how much had changed in his absence. "Are you?"_

_"You like eating during sex," Brennan noted with a crooked grin and a teasing lilt to her voice as she thought of how much she has enjoyed giving herself to him that way. "Mmm? Why shouldn't I be so entitled if that's what I want?" _

_"So wait," he snorted. "Are you seriously—?" He cocked his head to the side and arched an eyebrow. "Tell me you're not really into the food during sex thing now. Because, I mean...you and me, we never did that. So if you are now, it would mean you picked it up somewhere else. And I mean I know that I was gone a long time, but I sorta hoped you and I would pick up where we left off so...I mean, you're not, right?" He paused and then asked again, "Are you?"_

_Feeling a tender need to put his anxiety at rest, she said with a smile, "No," she said with a roll of her eyes as she turned her attention back to the cups and saucers. "Oh, and for the avoidance of any doubt on any other proclivities I may or may not have in your absence, Angel_—_although, it should put you at ease to know that while you were gone, no there hasn't been anyone else, and yes, I see no reasons why we shouldn't proceed as we had before you left_—_provided you remember that, well," she said, turning her head to the side and regarding him out of the corner of her eye. "I'm still not into the idea of tea-bagging, so if you were having any thoughts of—" Seeing him roll his eyes with a loud sigh, she laughed and shook her head, then turned back to arranging the biscuits on a small plate. After a few seconds, she didn't look up but turned and called over her shoulder. "It's just that if we're having biscuits with our tea, we'll need saucers, which means we should use proper teacups, mmm?"_

"_Sure," he replied. He thought about the last year he'd spent in the hell into which L.A. had been plunged, and how basic necessities—shelter, a comfortable bed, running water, a hot meal—could not be taken for granted, and it seemed strange to now be once more in his longtime lover's home, safe and comfortable, waiting for her to make him a cup of hot tea in a dainty porcelain teacup. The contrast was so surreal it sent a shiver down his spine and caused him to shrug it off with a roll of his shoulder. "That sounds great," he said, then fell once more into silence as his mind swirled with thoughts. _

_Brennan watched him for a long time. She studied the look of him. Her eyes skated over the architecture of his face, neck, and shoulders, and she noted that he seemed strong—not physically weakened by the experiences of the last year, at least not in any way that she could yet discern—but tired. A faint smile flashed across her lips as she found herself again admiring the facial features that she'd admired for so long: his heavy brow and deep-set, warm brown eyes, his high cheekbones, the subtle cleft in his lightly-stubbled chin, and his prominent Adam's apple, which bobbed up and down as he swallowed. She pouted her lips a little that he was still wearing his leather jacket, which concealed so many of the desirable parts of his body, but her eyes nonetheless dipped to admire the triangle of olive skin exposed by the open-necked way he liked to wear his shirt, with the top three buttons undone, and then skimming further down to where his hands—large, strong and covered with a web of thick veins—emerged from the cuffs of his jacket. She felt her cheeks flush a little as she continued to drink in the sight of him. His waistline, as always, was flat and trim, and as her eyes began to wander lower, she heard him clear his throat. _

_When he realized that she was staring at him, Angel looked up and gave her a quizzical look of her own. "What?"_

"_It's just that..." her words trailed off, a seriousness coming onto her face as she looked at him._

"_What?" he prompted her since he sensed her hesitation. "What is it?"_

_She was quiet for a minute and then sighed. Looking up at him, she finally answered, "I've...well, I've missed you. It's just that you were gone a very long time, Angel."_

"_You have no idea," he said, placing his hand on the counter and drumming his fingers on the granite-colored formica as the kettle began to emit ever louder waves of rumbling sounds. "It was a—" Angel looked away from her and stared at his feet. He closed his eyes and sighed. _

"_Bren," he said, raising his gaze to meet her pale eyes and discerning the pain and—though he wasn't sure of it—what appeared to him to be a flicker of uncertainty he saw in her eyes. "I missed you so much, Bren," he said, his voice low and rich. "I mean, I didn't know until I got back that time moved differently there than it did here. You'd think I wouldn't be surprised by that now. But, for me, Bren? It was almost a whole damn year." He stopped for a minute, his loving gaze softening as he looked at her and admitted in a quiet voice, "I thought about you all the time, you know, while I was gone. It killed me to think that you didn't know where I'd gone to, or how long it'd be before I got back, and that there wasn't a way for me to let you know that I hadn't..." He paused, remembering the anguish he felt at losing contact with her for so long. "That I didn't walk away from you—from us. I missed you so much, and..." He shrugged. "Maybe it sounds crazy, but it was almost like, the longer I was gone and the farther I felt from you, the more I tried to feel that part of you that's inside of me, you know—to listen to it. I'd lay in bed at night—or in whatever place I managed to find to sleep in on those nights where I couldn't make it back to my own bed—and it'd be quiet, and I'd be able to hear it, humming in my ears. Your breath, your heartbeat—that part of your soul, you know—inside of me, and I hoped...prayed, really...that whenever it was I could get back to you, that you'd know by then that I didn't stay away because I didn't want to be with you, the way we'd planned to be together. Knowing, I guess, the way we had planned to spend more time together, to find a way to have a better life, you and me, it gave me hope. I hoped that maybe there was someway you could feel what I was feeling just like I could feel you?" _

_His voice trailed off and for a few seconds he didn't say anything. Then, nodding as if in assent to something said only in his own mind, he began to speak again. _

"_It gave me hope, feeling our connection like I did, but not just about all the horror that was around me, and that there was a way out of it. But hope also that, maybe if, with a part of you inside of me, I felt this way, that maybe—you know, just maybe—you'd be back in D.C., feeling the same way about me," he told her with a quiet sigh. He pressed his lips into a firm line and drew a deep breath, then said, "Bren, I'm not sure if—I'm not sure how I'd have gotten through if it weren't for you and thinking about you. When it all got, you know, really heavy, I'd close my eyes and think about the last time we were together, and the way you felt in my arms, and the way you sound when you're sleeping there next to me, and—"_

_Angel suddenly cut himself off as Brennan pushed herself away from the counter and quickly came towards him, a glint in her pale blue eyes as she moved past him on the way to the stove, her hips brushing against his as she held her hand a few inches away from the kettle. The now provocative smile she had on her face widened as she registered proof of his continued interest in the way his dark eyes widened and they followed her every move. The kettle continued to whistle, softly at first, and then more loudly and insistently, and Brennan picked the kettle off the burner, quickly silencing its impatient whistling by flipping open the spout with one hand and switching off the burner with the other. She poured the steaming hot water into the cups and watched the tea bags sink down until they touched bottom and then slowly float up to the top again. Angel continued to stare at her as a hungry man looked at a banquet he was preparing to pounce on and devour and the look he gave her made her decision for her._

_Without a brief backward glance at the steeping cups of tea, Brennan moved in again, sidling up to him as she realized he was still wearing his scuffed, weathered hip-length black leather jacket. She brought her hand up and palmed the cool, smooth leather, caressing her hand down his bicep and brushing her fingertips across the outer edge of his shoulder. A low, muffled growl sounded from deep in Angel's throat as she pressed her thumb into the side of his arm, then stepped away for a moment before walking around behind him, curling her fingers around the lapels of his jacket as she slid it off his broad, round shoulders. Angel shrugged his arms out of the jacket and, as soon as he was free of it, turned around to face her. Brennan draped the cool leather jacket over the back of one of the dining room chairs and walked into the living room with a scarcely audible snicker as she heard him follow closely on her heels. _

"_Did you miss me?" she asked with laughter in her voice as she made her way towards the sofa. _

"_You know I did," Angel answered, his jaw tensing as he reached for her arms and spun her around before she reached the couch. "You know I did," he said again, tilting his head to the side as he gazed deeply into her eyes, darkness penetrating light, his mouth hovering near hers as he felt her warm breath on his upper lip. _

"_Every," he whispered, pressing his lips to hers, clutching her upper lip between his for a brief second before pulling away again. _

"_Single..." Again, his lips grasped at hers, letting her feel the contact with his lips for a fleeting moment before breaking off contact again. _

"_Second..." _

_He brought a hand up and, touching Brennan's jaw with only the pads of his forefingers, turned her head slightly and, with his other hand, pulled her face to his, engulfing her mouth with his searing kiss. Angel's tongue surged into her mouth and swept along the round edge of hers, gliding from one side of her silky warm cheek to the other, smiling against her lips as she moaned into his kiss. Skimming along the bottom of her tongue as a low hum sounded from his own throat, he pulled away and broke the kiss, a sloppy grin hanging off his bee-stung lips as he said, "Every single damn second of every single damn day." _

_He smiled as she leaned in to resume the kiss and shook his head. "Every day for a whole damn year, I missed you," he said, bringing his hands down to the bottom hem of her spaghetti-strap camisole and skimming his thumb across the smooth skin of her belly as she raised her arms, letting the garment up and over her head and free her breasts as she let him know that his touch was welcome, wanted, and wouldn't be protested even in the name of teasing him in the way she so enjoyed._

"_Oh, fuck," she sighed as his palms cupped the sides of her breasts, his thumbs swiping across the firm points of her nipples as she drew a sharp breath between her teeth. "What about the tea?" she murmured, knowing that any attempt to keep up the pretense of teasing him was now futile, but unable to help herself even as she felt her want for him continued to pulse more strongly with each second that passed between them._

_To make certain there wasn't any doubt in her mind, Angel confirmed such thoughts when he muttered, "Fuck the tea."_

_A throaty laugh rumbled in her throat again in response. She opened her mouth to say something, but was immediately cut off as he quietly hushed her._

"_Shhhh," he whispered as his hands skimmed along the sides of her breasts and down to her waist as he turned her around so that he had his back to the sofa and she stood before him. He slid his hands beneath the waistband of her black yoga pants and began to ease them gently over the round flare of her hips. "I thought of you every day, Bren," he repeated in a low, almost breathless voice as she reached down with her own hands, pushing her pants down her thighs as he took a step back. _

"_I dreamt about you," he said. "I'd dream about when we were together, you know, waking up in each other's arms—in Chicago, and for those weeks in Mérida. I'd dream about what it'd be like to live like that again, you and me, making love every night and waking up together and making love again in the morning, before..." He smiled as he watched her slide her pants and panties off her hips, unable to keep from staring at the auburn triangle between her legs, then catching himself with a sheepish grin and bringing his eyes back up to hers. "Before we ever said 'good morning' to each other. And it was—I clung to that dream, Bren. I reached out and grabbed it and held onto it the whole time, thinking that if I could just get back—out of the hell that L.A.'d been damned to, and out of the hell it was to be away from you—and back to you, that maybe we could have that, you and I." _

_Brennan's eyes glistened with feeling as she heard his words and she felt her heart begin to race. she licked her lips and said, "Angel, I—" As suddenly as she spoke, she found herself without words._

_He looked at her, his mouth falling open as he thought of a thousand things he'd thought of and couldn't say in the year since he'd last seen her beautiful face, but as he gazed on that face, he, too, suddenly found himself unable to utter a single word. He felt a wave of feeling and desire crash over him. He reached down and unbelted his jeans, thumbing open the buttons and unzipping his fly, looking up at her with a open-mouthed grin as he shoved them off of his hips. Sensing that he had abdicated to his passions, Brennan nodded silently, stepped out of her knit pants and kicked them to the side, then stepped forward and reached for the placket of his dark charcoal gray button-down shirt and began plucking open the buttons one at a time._

"_I missed you so much," she said in a husky voice, unbuttoning the last button and opening his shirt wide, revealing the wide expanse of his bare, hairless chest. Angel leaned his head back and swallowed, his Adam's apple dipping as he felt her fingertips skate across his hard, flat nipples. "I thought I'd lost you," she said. "I didn't know what—"_

"_Shhhh," he repeated, quieting her as he slid his arms out of his shirt and let it fall to the floor in a silent whisper. "I'm here," he said, his voice calm in its reassurance to her. "It's okay." _

_Brennan nodded wordlessly as she watched him step out of his jeans and reached over to ease his black boxer briefs off his hips, a smile flashing across her lips as she noted how his arousal peeked out of the flap in the front of his shorts. She considered saying something witty, but her mind was already so clouded with want that she couldn't decide among the half-dozen various quips she had in mind that were ready to be slung at him. Angel hissed slightly as she pulled the waistband of his boxer briefs over his hardened flesh, but as soon as the garment overcame that obstacle he pushed her hands away and shoved them down his thighs himself, not wanting to wait another extra second to feel her skin on his. Kicking away the jersey-knit shorts, he sat down on the sofa, his legs slightly spread as he gestured for her to join him with a vague jerk of his chin, holding his arms open wide, his fingers waggling encouragingly._

"_I want you," he moaned. "God, I want you. Tell me you felt the same way, Bren. Tell me. Tell me you want me."_

_No sooner had she seen his invitation and heard his words then she took a step towards him and, pausing for a moment to admire his well-toned arms, chiseled chest and muscular thighs, between which rose the proud flesh of his arousal, twitching expectantly as she licked her lips at seeing the glistening drop oozing from its tip._

"_Oh, I want you," she confessed. "I've always wanted you, Angel...and I think I always will."_

_Brennan rolled her lips between her teeth to suppress a smile as she straddled him, breathing a low sigh as she felt the crisp curls on the outsides of his thighs brush against the smooth, silky skin on the insides of hers. She reached out and brought her right hand up from his waist over his tight-rimmed navel to his firm pectoral muscle. She reached her other hand around to the back of his waist and pressed her fingers into his firm ass, eliciting a low growl from his throat. _

"_Bren," he moaned, thrusting his hips up as she stroked her hand over the ropy surface of his muscular back. "Oh, lass, I love the way you feel." _

_She let her fingertips linger for almost a minute over his round, firm pectoral muscles and murmured something unintelligible as she soaked in the smooth, strong feel of him, leaning her head back as she felt the fingers of his large hands press into the flesh of her hips. _

"_Oh, my God, Angel," she sighed as he walked his hands around to the front of her waist, brushing his thumbs over her wiry auburn curls as his hands passed over her most sensitive parts and came to rest on the tops of her creamy white thighs. "I want you...I've wanted you for so long. I-I missed you so badly, although there's no logical or scientific reason I should feel that way, that it actually hurt. I-I—"_

_Then, suddenly, her breath caught in her throat as it occurred to her and her brain processed the significance of what sensory data her fingers were feeding to it._

"_Angel," she whispered, sucking in a sharp breath between her teeth as he rubbed broad, even circles on the insides of her thighs with his thumbs. "Your skin...it's..."_

"_Shhhhh," he hushed her once, pursing his lips as he sighed, his eyes closed and his head tilted slightly down and to one side as he sought to let himself be inundated by the feel of her skin on his. "Shhhh..."_

_Ignoring his gentle admonition, she continued and said quietly, "It's warm." Angel lifted his head up and their eyes met, locking in a deep, penetrating stare for several seconds before she narrowed her eyes and shifted her gaze slightly. "Your skin," she whispered again. "It's warm." Her mouth hung open in surprise as she struggled to process the significance of the curious warmth she felt emanating beneath her fingers._

_And then, after another few moments, she realized that it wasn't just the sensation of warmth that pulsed beneath her hand._

_It was his pulse._

_Her own heart began to race at feeling the throbbing in his chest. Brennan felt her skin flash hot as she leaned in closer to him, her lips hovering just a fraction of an inch from his as a moist stream of air passing from his nostrils warmed her upper lip._

"_Angel," she sighed as he pulled her close and brushed his lips against hers. "You're—"_

"_Yeah," he sighed, a half-second before he kissed her, crushing her lips beneath his as she opened her mouth to his eager tongue._

_For nearly a hundred and fifty years, she'd taken him into her bed, or sojourned in his, enjoying the feel of his caresses, melting into his arms and rocking her body against his, drowning in the pleasure wrought by his skillful lovemaking. But, before this day, she'd never felt the rhythmic beating of his heart. This day, this singular day, was the first time she had ever known him intimately as an ordinary, mortal man whose heart raced with desire and whose breaths rose and fell, and who, when she reluctantly broke the kiss, joined her in gasping for breath._

"_Are you really—?"_

"_Yes," he said with simple sigh. _

_Brennan stroked her fingers over his chest muscle, and as she felt his chest rise and fall with breath, and his heart beat strongly beneath her fingers, she found her own breath taken away by the magnitude of it all. Suddenly it all made sense—his breathless false start in the foyer, his desperate demand for water, his decline of the offer of a glass of transfigured blood, and the scorched-earth path he burned through her refrigerator and pantry when he'd gotten the munchies. Somehow, someway, while he'd been separated from her, he'd changed_—_dramatically so. He was no longer a vampire, a demon cursed with a human soul. He was now what she had, in a sense, always thought of him as—a man—but now, without qualification. _

_As he felt her fingers press into the skin over his now-beating heart, Angel closed his eyes slowly and relaxed into her touch, convinced at that moment that he could feel her heartbeat and his falling into sync as her fingertips gently stroked the soft olive skin of his chest. He leaned his head back and sighed, then lowered his chin and opened his eyes, gazing deep into her bottomless blue eyes. His mouth fell open, and he took a breath as if to speak, but no words came out. His eyes skimmed the outline of her features, as if he were soaking them in and devoting them to memory, to remind him of what he hadn't touched in almost a year. _

"_I need to feel you, Angel," Brennan said, tugging at his forearm. _

_With a toothy, lopsided grin, he nodded and brought his hand around, skimming over the top fringe of her springy curls with his knuckles before swiping his thumb down along the cleft between her folds. "You're so wet," he whispered, gently parting her folds with his thumb, gathering a bit of her silky moisture before drawing his forefingers up from the creamy rim of her opening up to her hard, throbbing clit._

"_Oh, God," she cried out as he pressed on her tender nub, rolling tight circles around it as she shuddered with pleasure. Angel thumbed her clit as he slid his forefingers down to her slippery hole, rimming her gently before sliding his fingers in, sucking in a breath of his own as he felt her tighten around him. "Oh, God, don't tease me like that," she hissed, her mouth falling open in a long groan as she felt his fingers stroke along the place inside of her he'd found out a century before was the surest path to making her shatter._

"_I missed this," he said softly, his breath tickling the wisps of hair in front of her ear as he leaned in close, pressing a feather-soft kiss against her temple as he felt her body tense against him. _

_Brennan's murmured utterances of "Oh, my God" and "Jesus, Angel" dissolved into a series of peaking moans and long, breathy sighs, and he cupped his hand over her sex, plunging his fingers deeper into her as he began to grind the heel of his palm against her swollen clit. _

"_Do you want me?" he asked her once more, each word falling as a puff of hot breath in her ear. "Lass, I wanna be inside of you so bad," he sighed. "I wanna feel you. So much, so badly." He kept stroking that tender, spongy place inside her as he turned his head slightly and sucked her earlobe between his lips. His lips tingled as he felt the faint crackle of electricity and a dim aura of blue begin to shimmer around the edge of her body like a halo._

_Brennan felt a hot flash of pleasure as he drew a long, hard suck on her earlobe, and after a couple of more round caresses on the place only he seemed able to reach, she felt the room begin to spin as she felt herself drop into a breathless free-fall. A flash of blue blinded him as he heard the buzzing in his ears, and Angel felt the fine hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck stand on end as the blue light pulsed to herald her imminent release._

"_Ohhhhh, Angellllll," she moaned as her back arched and she tightened around him, then shuddered, finally collapsing against him as he chuckled._

"_You're amazing, lass," he said, gently caressing her back as she slowly coasted down from her peak. After a minute, he felt her breaths even out and slow to a more normal rhythm, and with a faint smile, Angel pushed her away, reaching between his legs and fisting himself, giving himself a couple of slow tugs as he watched her raise herself up enough to let him line himself up beneath her. "I've wanted this so, want you so damn badly," he said, "for so long, I nearly lost my mind." He swiped his swollen, glistening tip along the length of her, then drew a circle, rimming her opening once, twice, and a third time before he pulled her down on top of him._

"_Ohhh, fuck, Angel," she grunted as she felt him peel her open like a flower, inch by delicious inch, until he was seated all the way inside of her, his black curls meeting her auburn ones as he looked down at the place of their joining with a wicked smile. "God, you feel good," she said as she lifted herself up, hissing a bit as she felt his hard length leave her painfully empty, then surge back into her, stretching her in the most delicious, mind-numbing fashion that only he ever had, again and again as he jerked his hips up and pulled her back down. _

_Each time he rolled his hips, sending himself up and into her, she was there to meet him with a smooth downstroke of her own, and they soon settled into a rolling rhythm of strokes and counter-strokes punctuated by his quiet grunts and low growls, on one end of the vocal register, and her steadily rising moans and breathy sighs on the other. _

"_Oh, fuck, Bren," he grunted. "Fuck, lass, you feel soooo fuckin' good," he said, the lyrical lilt of his long-faded brogue flickering on the edges of his voice before he silenced his own mutterings by taking her left breast into his hand and bringing her nipple to his mouth. He closed his lips around her rosy, pebbled flesh, drawing a tight circle with the point of his tongue a couple of times before drawing her nipple into his mouth with a hard, wet suck._

"_Oh, God!" she moaned, arching her head back and revealing the long line of her slender neck. Angel opened his eyes and stared at her neck, his lips twitching as he remembered how much he loved when she offered her neck to him. But as he felt her hand over his now-beating heart, he blinked away the thought and returned his attentions to her hard, erect nipple, pulling it into his mouth with another firm suck as he jerked his hips up, sending himself balls-deep inside of her and squeezing his eyes shut at feeling her soft, silky folds begin to tremble around him._

_Taking one last pull on her nipple and flicking the point of it with the tip of his tongue as he let it fall away from his mouth, he brought both hands to rest, one on each hip, as he pulled her down hard and fast over him trying to thrust deeper and deeper into her with each stroke as he felt the familiar tingle of an electric charge pepper his skin. _

_Angel squeezed the soft, springy flesh of her hips with his fingers and with a loud grunt jerked up and into her, as hard and as deeply as he could, pulling her down to meet his thrust and holding her there as he felt himself begin to spend. He rocked his hips into her a couple of more times, holding her fast against him as he raised his gaze and pressed his lips to hers. She opened her mouth with a moan that he quickly swallowed with his ravenous kiss. With one last upward thrust, he felt her clench around him in a flash of azure light before he himself broke as her muscles fluttered against him. Each wave he felt enveloped him as he reveled in the quivering movements as her body swallowed his hot seed as it pulsed out of him, milking him until his release faded and he slumped against her, his chin resting on her shoulder as their bodies rested flush against one another, clung together with sticky sweat that shimmered in the warm light of the morning sun as the last traces of blue flickered away like a candle that had extinguished itself._

_After a couple of minutes, Angel lifted his chin off her shoulder and smiled at her, reaching up and brushing a lock of her hair off the side of her sweat-damp temple._

"_Is it true?" she asked, shrugging at the gesture as she stroked her fingers over his left chest muscle. _

_He nodded as he gave her a small smile. "Yeah," he said simply. "I'm free. I earned it. The prophecy? The Shanshu? I did it, Bren."_

_Brennan winced at the reference to the prophecy named for the two proto-Bantu words that translated to the concept of 'living to die.' After decade after decade spent battling the demonic forces of darkness, while dodging the relentless efforts of Slayers who'd failed to recognize him for what he was, Angel had apparently risked his immortal life selflessly enough to earn his mortality, shedding the curse of his own endlessness. Two hundred fifty years after h'd died, he finally was free to live and die again, this time as a mortal man._

_The thought of it made Brennan's own heart stutter as she looked up at him with a hopeful smile of what the realization meant not only for Angel, but for both their futures._

"That was a good day for us," Angel said. "I was beside myself, so happy to see you after...after all that time. I'd missed you so much, Bren. And..."

He took a deep breath and sighed. "I guess I didn't...I wasn't sure what...how you'd react to finding out that I was...well, what Spike called 'a real boy.' I didn't know what you'd think." He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. He remembered the look on her face after he'd confessed that he'd fulfilled the Shanshu Prophecy, and how all the color in her face, which had in that moment been deeply flushed in the wake of their lovemaking, suddenly fled. She'd blanched, and her pale eyes widened with realization.

"But I think that...well, you thought I'd stop fighting?" he asked in a low voice as he opened his eyes again and turned to meet hers. "After I got my humanity back, you know, didn't you? I remember, us talking and making plans. I didn't...I don't know why I didn't think of it until just this moment, but you thought I'd stop fighting and I didn't." He held his mouth open, shifting his jaw from right to left as he considered saying something else, then he shook his head again and merely sighed.

"For a year, Angel..." Brennan paused when he shot her a puzzled look. She rolled her eyes as she quickly amended, "Okay, for _almost _a year, ever since you managed to free L.A. and return it from hell, I've had to wake up dreading that that would be the day that I found out that you'd been shot or stabbed or poisoned. Or, I'd go to sleep dreading that I'd be wakened to find out the same things. But, instead of backing off, you've spent all this time living a life thinking that you're still the same person you were before the Prophecy gave you your life back." She stopped, a heavy sigh falling away from her lips, as she tilted her head and looked over at him. "I mean, how many times have I gotten a call or an email saying you'd been fighting demons or vampires or whatever else was raising hell in L.A., and you'd been hurt? And, despite what you said, every time you've tried to get away, someone else keeps pulling you back. First it was Ilyria and Spike, then it was Connor—I think...after the last time with him, that's when I knew that you'd never be free of it, never be free of them no matter how many times you tried to walk away." She stopped and paused as she said, "Do you know how fucking annoying it was to get a call from Spike of all people to find out that you'd fallen from a third-floor window and had been knocked unconscious? I mean, I was grateful for the call since it was the only one that ever came. I wouldn't have known otherwise. But, when he told me, Angel? All I heard was that you'd fallen, been hurt, and for three days, Angel. For three days, you were out cold. Do you know how scared I was when I thought that I'd lost you?"

Angel's nostrils flared as his heartbeat pulsed in his temples. He knew what she'd said was true. Though he had fulfilled the terms of the Shanshu Prophecy and was no longer a Champion, he was still a warrior, through and through. And so he didn't answer her question, because he had no answer for it.

"Dammit, Angel," she spat. "You're not a 250 year-old immortal vampire anymore. Don't you get it? You're a mortal human male in his late twenties, but..." She took a deep breath and sighed in exasperation. "I guess you're like me, stuck in your ways, and so you never made the shift, Angel. You never really got it through your thick skull that, well, your skull wasn't really as thick as you apparently thought it was. And...and I wasn't going to wait around for you to finally learn the hard way, Angel. I had to save you—not just from the people who want to do you in, but from your own incorrigible stubbornness." She turned and looked away. "It doesn't matter, I suppose, not anymore. It's done. You'll get the life and family you deserve, and you'll finally be safe and happy."

"But Bren, what if I _am _happy?" he asked. "Right now? The way things are? I _don't _want a different life. Do you understand?" He closed his eyes and shook his head, his frustration and anger having given way to a coalescing resignation. "Look, it's just...Bren, you know how I feel about you. I _know _you do. And you say I get to have the life and the family I've always wanted. But what if all I really wanted was _you_, Bren? And I have to give you up. I have to lose you. And I don't want to think about it because I know that we need to stick together if you and I are gonna get through this, but I can't help but being afraid that I'll never get you back. And so how can you know I'll be happy if...if I have to lose you? I won't ever get you back."

Brennan stared at him, and then, feeling as if they were back-tracking, couldn't help but feel as if she were repeating what they'd already beaten to death through the course of their discussion. Still, as he looked at her, she couldn't help but feel a need to tell him once more how she felt given what he'd just told her. "Do you think this was easy for me to do?" she asked him. "Do you think that you're the only one who's losing something, someone? It's not like this isn't without cost to me, Angel."

"What do you mean?" Angel asked as a questioning look crossed his face. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"

"In some ways it'll be even worse than if I'd never seen you again," Brennan explained. "But, it's like I told you. At some point, our paths will cross again. They will. You have a piece of me and so at some point it will bring us back into one another's lives. But, when that happens, do you know what it will be like to have you looking at me like I'm a stranger? Like I'm a nobody who has no meaning, no significance to you? I'm going to see you, and remember every single detail of every single thing that's ever happened to us, between us, everything we've shared, and you—"

"And I won't remember any of it," he said, his face contorted in pain, as comprehension dawned as to the true extent of what'd she done for him and the sacrifice she was going to make for him—and continue making for him day after day after day while she watched over him. "I won't remember any of it, but you will."

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "You won't, and yes, I will, and you know what, Angel? I know it'll kill me, Angel. It'll kill me to look at you and see you with another woman. You'll have a new life, a new start—maybe a chance to get married, have children...but you'll...you'll do it alone. I won't be a part of it. I'll be alone, and by myself, always on the outside looking in, and I won't be a part of any of it. I-I..." her voice cracked again as she hastily blinked away a few more tears. "You'll look at another woman like you've looked at me. You'll be happy and find love and...and that's enough. For me, knowing that you'll have that, it's enough. But, please, don't ever think for a minute that it wasn't done without a price...not just for you. But, for me, too. The price was high, and I'll live with the consequences of my choice every single day for the rest of however long I live. So, don't think—just don't think that you'll be the only one to bear the cost of this decision."

"I know, okay?" he said, holding his hands up as he felt his frustration spike again. He took a deep breath and turned to her, his mouth hanging open as he felt his sinuses burn as a wave of guilt crashed over him. "Look," he said, his voice damp with emotion. "I know this is gonna hurt you. More than it'll hurt me, I know, because you'll remember. But..."

He sighed and shook his head. He felt a clenching in his stomach as he struggled to make sense of it all. A part of him wanted to punch something, or—better yet, to break something—just to express the anger that throbbed in his veins. He knew he had every reason to be angry at her, for robbing him of the chance for a future with her, the future that they'd struggled for eighty-odd years to cobble together, and just as they were finding a way to make it work between them, to make that future a reality, she'd seen to it that it would never come to pass. Yet another part of him couldn't bring that anger full-circle, because he knew that what she did, and what would happen to them, was done not for her benefit, but for his. Had she been selfish, none of this would have transpired. What she did, mind-rendingly painful as it was, she did for him and him alone. And Angel knew that no one had ever made such a sacrifice for him, not in the over two hundred fifty years since he came into this world as Liam, the son of a Galway linen and silk merchant. No one had ever done anything like this for him. She alone had done this wonderfully terrible thing for him, and soon, he'd would lose her forever.

Suddenly, the thought occurred to him. He had to thank her, to show her how grateful he was to have had her in his life. "When?" he asked her. "How long before it's done?"

Brennan's hand came up to her face as she hastily used the back of her hand to wipe away some of the tears away from her red and puffy eyes.

"We have today," she said softly. "It won't happen until twenty-four hours have passed from when you came here, which was a couple of hours ago, more or less."

"Then we have today? This afternoon and tonight. That's all we have left together, isn't it?" Angel looked at her and into her red-rimmed blue eyes. He blinked and looked away for a moment, remembering the morning he'd woken up in another bed, with another woman whom he'd deeply been in love with at the time, only realize that he'd only had the happiness of a single, ordinary day with her before he lost that one, too. In that case, the twenty-four hours he had with Buffy came and went before he realized he'd lost his chance to have something more with her.

_This is infinitely worse, _he thought. _Not the least of which because I get to spend the rest of what little time I have left with her knowing it's all I'll ever have of the only woman I've ever really, truly wanted._ _The only woman I've ever really loved. _The pain at such a thought was enough to make him want to cry out. _God, help me. God help us both._

"Yes," she said softly, nodding at him. "For whatever it's worth."

_For whatever it's worth. _

Her words echoed in his mind as he wanted to howl in frustration and despair. _For whatever it's worth, _he thought to himself. _It's worth everything to me. You're worth everything to me. You're all I've ever wanted. And all I have left, of you, to give you and to be with you, is today. Right now, this day is everything. It's all we have._

"Then I don't want to waste another second," he said as he looked at her with a passionate determination shining in his dark eyes. "If this is all we have, you and me..." Angel blinked, then stepped forward and reached up, cupping her jaw between his hands. "I need to tell you something," he said, his voice low and smooth. "Something very important, Bren. Something that you've got to remember for both of us since it seems like I'm not gonna remember."

"What?" she rasped, a new type of fear crossing her tortured face as she realized what he was about to say.

"I love—"

Twisting her face away from him, she let out an anguished cry. "No!" she yelled. "Oh, don't. Please, God, don't, Angel. Don't you dare."

"What?" he blinked, clearly confused and shocked at her reaction. "I don't understand."

"Don't you dare tell me that you love me, Angel," she croaked. "Please. I'm begging you. Don't...don't say it."

"Why not?" he asked, a pained look crossing his face as the agony seemed to be cutting him in half. "It's true. I do."

"Don't say it," she repeated, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Please don't say it."

"But, why?' he asked again, not understanding her strange behavior. "Why not?"

_Please, lass, _he silently begged her. _Please let me tell you. Please let me tell you the words. You've got to hear them so you can remember us...how we feel about one another. You've got to remember for both of us._

Brennan looked up at him, her face in the sharpest pain she'd ever experienced as she whispered, "Because if you say it then...then it's like you said. It'll be the final nail in the metaphorical coffin of our relationship, Angel. If you say it—say those words to me?—then it means I'll lose you. For good. It means that, despite what I've done to you, to us, it means there's no hope, Angel. And, I can't deal with that. I need to believe that somehow...at some point in the future, like you said, that you and I will find some way to get through this. I have to believe that you and I will find a way. Despite the illogic of it all, I need to think that we'll find a way to get over this, and at some point, we'll be in the same place at the same time, and we'll be able to be together. But, if you tell me that you love me now, that'll never happen. I don't know why I know that, but I do. So, please...don't. Just don't. Don't tell me you love me. Not today. Wait, please," she begged. "Just wait. Wait until you can say it, and I can hear it, and we can be together to and be happy because of it? Please? Please, Angel? I know I have no right to ask that of you after everything I've done, but...please. Just wait?"

Angel sat there, staring at her, as his nostrils burned with tears he refused to let her see him shed. his jaw hardened for a moment as he felt a flash of indignant anger, not at the woman who sat beside him whose soft, plaintive lips parted slightly as her pale blue eyes watched his face expectantly, but rather at the vengeful forces of darkness that sought to rob him of every possible happiness, however fleeting or incomplete. He craned his head back and stared at the textured white ceiling, wanting more than anything to howl in bitter anguish with every bit of breath he had at the prospect before him of losing forever the only thing that had ever made him really, truly happy:

_Her._

His mouth fell open as he squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately to hold back his tears, and he grunted as his hands formed fists so tight, his fingernails dug into the palms of his hands. He took a deep breath and lowered his gaze, closing his mouth as he looked deeply into her shimmering pale eyes. Finally, reluctantly, he nodded his head.

"Then let me show you," he said. "Let me show you what you are to me, so that you'll always know—no matter what happens after this, what you mean to me and what I feel about you—long after I no longer remember you, or us, or what we had, or what we gave to each other these last hundred and fifty years." He felt a tingling in his jaw as the tears threatened once more. "Let me show you, Bren. Let me prove to you what you are to me. Please..."

Finally, unable to resist him, to fight him any longer, she whispered with an almost imperceptible nod, "Yes. That is...I want to feel it. Feeling it is more important than hearing it right now. So, you can show me, Angel. Let me feel it. Let me feel you. Please? Show me."

"I will," he promised even as he moved closer towards her and then proceeded to make good on his vow to her as his lips crashed into hers in what the pair of them somehow prayed wouldn't be one of the last kisses they ever shared.

* * *

Much, much later, the pair lay spent.

Brennan, out of necessity, was the first to move when she could no longer stand how numb her arm felt. Shifting slightly, she pulled her arm away from where her hand had ended up tucked under Angel's back as she lay on top of him. He stirred at her movement, his eyes seeking out hers.

"You okay?" he asked quietly.

She nodded. "Yes," she answered. "I am. I'm just...I'm still trying to process things."

Reaching out, he grabbed for one of her hands. Enclosing it in his, he asked, his voice a bit rough as he spoke, "So...how long do we have?"

Glancing at the digital readout of her alarm clock on the nearby nightstand, Brennan craned her neck to see what time it was. After she saw what the neon green numbers said, she turned back to face Angel and answered, "There's a few hours yet. There's...well, like I said before? Twenty-four hours. We have twenty-four hours because He...well, let's just say when I made the deal, there was a need for balance."

"Balance?" he asked, sitting up slightly in bed. "What do you mean?"

"I-I..." She hesitated, not certain she wanted to burden him with the deal she'd struck...and with whom. "Well, contravening someone's free will like I've done, Angel. It's no small thing. So, to balance...a part of the deal was that I'd have a day with you before it took full effect...before I lost you...before you went away."

"So, what?" he asked. "The clock strikes twelve and at midnight I turn into a pumpkin?"

Unable to help herself, Brennan smiled slightly at what they both knew was a rather poor joke.

"No," she finally said. "You won't turn into a pumpkin. You'll...well, I'm not certain who you'll be. I won't know what your name is or what your job will be. All I know is that you'll be gone. You'll be gone, but you'll be happy. You'll have a good life, Angel. A good life..."

Not wanting to waste their preciously limited time rehashing things they'd already gone over, he interrupted her with a question. "You said earlier...you said that whoever I become, whatever I do...it'll be here? In D.C.?" he asked. "Are you certain? Is that right?"

Brennan considered his question for a minute and then slowly nodded. "Yes. That's...well, that's a result of the fact that you'll still have...the part of my soul you have."

His ears perking up, Angel's face took on a thoughtful look as he asked, even though she'd already told him as much, "I'll still keep it...even after, well, you know? I mean, I know you told me that, but it just seems...weird, you know...that I'll still have it, and be protecting something, even though I don't know I've got it. It's just, well, strange."

She looked at him and then nodded. "I gave it into your keeping," she reminded him, although she hardly needed to do so. She took a breath and shrugged. "When I came to the hospital," she began. "Well, actually, when I got the call from Spike, I was here, of course, and you had been in a coma. When he called, you hadn't made any improvements that suggested you would emerge from the coma. He called because he thought you were fading, and..." Her voice trailed off as the memory unleashed a gush of emotion. She closed her eyes and tried to refocus herself. "I got on the plane, and you know what? You emerged from that coma shortly after I changed planes in Chicago." She let her statement hang in the air between them for several seconds before she opened her mouth to speak again.. "Why would that have happened, Angel, if we weren't linked in a very profound and intricate way?" she asked. "We're tied to one another. You regaining your humanity and finally extinguishing the evil demon inside of you didn't sunder that link, even though the link itself—me giving that third of my soul to you—was only possible in the first instance because you were an immortal with evil in your heart."

Angel squinted his eyes and wrinkled his nose in confusion. "I don't understand," he said. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Brennan said, "that our connection has survived other changes, and I think it'll survive this one." She blinked away the recollection of her conversation with The One when he had said as much. _He has enough to deal with, _she told herself. _He doesn't need to know how I came to strike this bargain, or with whom. _"So," she said with a nod, "since you accepted custody of the Witch's Third, into your keeping it will stay."

"Even though I won't remember that I have it," he said, stating the obvious.

She looked at him for a moment and then shrugged. "I'm not really certain. I would assume, however, that no...you won't, if you won't remember me, then you won't remember that you have it."

"But, I'll still feel you," he said suddenly, his eyes narrowing again as he considered her words and thought of the cold Halloween night, eighty-odd years earlier, when he first felt her soul begin to thrum in his chest. "I'll come to you. Our bond...it'll still be there. We'll still...in five years? It'll still, that is—we'll still have to find one another, right?"

She was quiet, thinking on what He had said when they struck their deal: _even I can't break the terms of our original deal. You gave it into his keeping, and into his keeping it will stay. _

Looking up at him, she finally answered, her voice sadly hopeful, "I think, someway, that yes...we'll find one another."

He stared at her for a long minute, studying the lines and curves of her face and then breathed in relief. "Yeah...I think so, too," he said. "I'm not sure how or why...but if this thing you have done hasn't taken everything away from me, if I still have a part of you? Then, I know...I won't ever be alone, and...I know. I _know _it, Bren. And someday, I'll come for you. I won't be alone, and I'll find you."

Brennan felt her chest tighten a bit. She was reluctant to reach out to touch him, but unable to help herself, she was inexorably drawn to him. Her hand hovered over his brow before she reached out and stroked the close-trimmed hair over his ear with her thumb.

"You'll never be alone," she told him, her voice a solemn promise that started to build some confidence in her. "I'm not certain, but somehow...someway, I'll always look after you."

"And, I'll find you," he said, again mirroring her growing certainty. "As long as I have a part of you with me...inside of me...I'll...I know, somehow, someway, I'll find you again."

She swallowed, trying to clear the knot in her throat away, her eyes watering again. "I want to believe that, Angel. I-I...I think, maybe...somehow, I'll be able to get through this if I know that."

"It's true," he told her, the sincere promise clear in his voice as he spoke. "I swear it's true. One day...I don't know why I know this, because it's not like I'm suddenly getting visions or anything, but...I just know that one day, you know...when you're least expecting it, Bren? You'll look up...and there I'll be. I'll find you, and then maybe...maybe...even if I can't remember you? Maybe...maybe that won't matter. Because I'll know you anyway...because we'll still be one soul. And then—maybe? Maybe we can begin again."

She contemplated his words, almost too afraid to take solace and comfort in the hope he was offering her. But, unable to help herself, knowing that all would be well as long as she never contravened his free will—but telling herself, that she would hardly be doing such a thing if _he _came to _her_—she nodded.

"Yes," she finally said with a sad smile and firm nod. "Somehow...I think so, too. Angel. You'll come to me, for me...and then, somehow, someway...we'll begin again."

* * *

**-tbc-**

* * *

**A/N2**_**: **_Okay, so we know that was some pretty heavy stuff to get through even with the rather satisfying unfness we snuck in there. The good news is the angst is just about over. There's only one small part left to this piece. Coming up next: will Angel keep his promise? Once he's settled in his new life, somehow, someway, will he find Brennan and so they can find a way to begin again? Wouldn't you like to know? Then, please, be kind and let us know what you think...and don't forget to stay tuned for this story's epic epilogue-ish conclusion!


	6. Part V: The Bargain Fulfilled

**The Price to Be Paid**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: , then—moving on...

**Summary: **Please see the first chapter.

**Logistical Notes: **Please see the first chapter.

**A/N: **Well, by the end of Part IV, most everyone knew where this was going, so there's no need to mince words, we think. So, let's get back to revealing exactly what did happen when Angel was taken from Brennan and the terms of the deal she made with The One are finally fulfilled.

**UNF Alert: **Sadly, none is needed for this brief wrap up to the story. However, we, the writers of Dharmasera, Inc., keep it here to proudly remind us that more unf-age will be coming in the not too distant future. ::cue sadly hopeful music::

* * *

**Part V: The Bargain Fulfilled**

* * *

She didn't see him for thirty days.

And, for thirty days, Dr. Temperance Brennan came as close as she'd ever been in her entire almost five hundred years of existence as she'd ever been to being honestly and truly depressed. It was a rather new experience for her since, before him, she'd never really cared enough about something or someone else to be able to experience such strong emotions. And, all things considered, she wasn't certain she enjoyed the sensation. As a matter of fact, she believed that she could rather do without being depressed. Still, it was a pay to pass the time. And, so she took each day as it came, one twenty-four hour period at a time as she knew she couldn't do more than that without doing the one thing Angel had asked of her before they were parted.

_Be strong_, he'd whispered to her. _Be strong, and keep putting one foot in front of the other, Bren. Keep going forward, and one day_—_I'm not sure how or why_—_but, I promise...I'll come for you. We'll find each other. I swear. As long as you don't give up. Don't give up on me, don't give up on us, don't give up on yourself._

So, since he'd asked it of her, she tried to do her best—for him. Still, at first, it hurt too much beyond barely surviving. She couldn't take a breath, not think of him, and not feel an overwhelming sense of pain threaten to subsume her. Thus, since she didn't have any other choice, eventually...each day, she started to force herself not to think of anything that reminded her of her old life...and of him.

Instead, she concentrated on the beauty and rationality and logical constancy offered to her by science. Working in the lab, Brennan spent the majority of her waking hours each day occupied with identifying remains from Modular Bone Storage. She worked like an automaton, going from one set of remains to the next. For necessity's sake, she refused to think of anything beyond who she was in the context of that work.

She tried to forget that she'd been alive for almost five centuries, born in England, lived her life as a very powerful witch because of the deals she'd made, and that she'd fallen in love with an Irish vampire. Instead, she embraced the persona she'd adopted for _this _generation. She was Dr. Temperance Brennan, daughter of Matthew and Christine Brennan, older half-sister to Russ, native of Chicago, Illinois, and a graduate of Northwestern University. She was one of the world's most famous and most skilled forensic anthropologists which was why she'd gained a preeminent position in the Medico-Legal Lab of the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington D.C. She did what she had to do to lock her chaotic feelings away in a metaphorical box, compartmentalizing her past, her present, and her future. She locked away those feelings, burying them as deep as she could, so that maybe, just maybe, she'd be able to get on with her life with the knowledge that she'd lost the one man she'd ever loved.

Each day, she made a concerted effort not to think of Angel. And, for the eighteen to twenty hours she spent awake each day, she did a fairly decent job not thinking of the once-ensouled vampire now turned human or wondering about what had happened to him. She went about her day-to-day life, working at the Jeffersonian, teaching her classes at American, delivering lectures and writing—redrafting her novel even as she tried not to concentrate on the new character, a cop named Andy Lister, who'd crept into the manuscript draft at some point. She did her best to fill her hours with distractions.

It wasn't a perfect solution, and the people closest to her—as close in any case as Brennan ever let people come, other than the one person closest to her who was now unreachably far away—noticed the change in her manner. Her father and Russ left concerned messages on her voicemail. Even Zack Addy, her assistant and protégé, noticed the difference, but wisely kept his own counsel and a safe distance. A very old friend, another witch, coaxed her into going out with her for dinner one night and had tried to pry out of her the reason for her melancholy. But still, Brennan held her silence and just tried to manage as best she could, enduring each day by staying busy.

However, each night when she slept, her subconscious was not as compliant as her conscious mind had been because she found that no matter what she did that she still dreamed of him. Each night, she dreamed of Angel, reliving the various times they'd spent together over the hundred and fifty years of their acquaintance. The most painful dreams were those based on memories of the last year before he'd been sucked into hell along with the rest of L.A., when the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart had decided to punish those whom they believed had betrayed them (including Angel). During those few precious months, Brennan came as close as she could ever remember to having been truly happy for a significant period of time since the five years Angel had lived with her in Chicago during the 1920s.

In turn, each time she woke up burning with want of him, craving his touch, yearning to hear his smooth, low voice murmur in her ears as she moaned his name and never ever received the hoped-for response. During those painful moments were the only times she eventually allowed herself to cry until the want was washed out of her with the shedding of her tears. And, she only allowed those tears to fall silently and in private because she didn't know how else to cope.

On occasion, the rational part of her mind supposed that her suffering was a part of what made The One with whom she'd made her deal to give Angel a new life where he'd be safe and happy―even if it was without her―rather pleased with Himself and the bargain He'd struck. He liked to see her suffer and to feel pain, particularly through a conscious choice of her own. But, knowing there was nothing she could do about that, since there was no undoing the bargain that had been made, she struggled through as best she could. Not knowing any other way, she continued to shut herself off emotionally and took each day as it came. Each day, she built the walls that surrounded her heart a bit higher. And each day, she made it just that much more difficult for anyone to see her as anything more than the persona she'd spent years cultivating as a cold, unfeeling, and arrogant scientist, isolated from anyone who failed to appreciate the neutral comfort offered to her by science. Ever the fast learner, Brennan had done a remarkable job in shutting herself off in the month since she'd last seen Angel, until one day—one day, something changed.

It took Brennan a while to put her finger on the change.

In some ways, she sensed the shift immediately. In others, she was completely oblivious to what was happening to her. When she awakened on the morning of the first day of the new month of August, she realized that she felt quite different than she had for the previous month. For some reason, Brennan felt almost...positive. She'd slept unusually soundly the night before, hadn't dreamed a single dream of any kind, and was quite well rested when her alarm woke her up to begin another day. For some inexplicable reason, she realized as she ate breakfast and took time with her appearance, she felt almost...optimistic. At first, she attributed it to the start of a new lecture series she'd agreed to participate in at the bequest of her Department Chair at American University.

It had been some time since Brennan had interacted with anyone outside the lab or the classroom. As she finished her breakfast, got ready, and gave the shift in how she felt some more thought, she eventually decided that her change in mood had to be because she was no longer bordering on toppling headfirst into the edge of depression she'd teetered on for weeks. She didn't know why the afternoon lecture had seemingly roused her from her funk, but eventually decided not to question the welcome emotional shift further since she felt the best she had in some time. Thus, she went about her tasks that morning with an almost happy cadence that had been missing for some time of which everyone from her assistant to security guards at the lab took note. Her morning passed quickly and pleasurably, and Brennan even enjoyed a quick lunch with her friend Stephanie in Cleveland Park before proceeding to American for her lecture. Yes, all in all, it had been a good day thus far. That should've been a clue to her that something—or someone—was coming and would change the course of her life in ways that afternoon that would've seemed unimaginable just that morning.

At first, she didn't see him enter the lecture hall because she'd been too wrapped up in her presentation bullet points about different defleshing techniques she was using to support her presentation on the connection between osteology and its applicable uses in different disciplines and fields. The crux of her lecture's thesis was that osteology actually had many more interdisciplinary uses than most people gave it credit for, but she'd gotten slightly sidetracked on a tangent when one of the students in the audience had asked her a question about how flesh could best be removed during the maceration process. She got into the normal mindset she took on when engaging in academic work and barely registered that didn't directly relate to maintaining that mental groove that she'd fallen into during the ebb and flow of her lecture.

It was almost ninety minutes into the lecture—almost at the tail end of the presentation—when the door to the lecture hall silently opened and a single person walked with purpose into the room where she was speaking. A very small part of Brennan's rational mind registered the fact that a small pulse begin to hum in her heart and mind. But, knowing if she interrupted her rhythm—that she'd never regain it in the few moments remaining before the lecture was over—Brennan ignored it as she kept talking.

"―works quickly but the bone itself, is cooked; transforming the marrow," Brennan had explained about how remains could be boiled as one way bones might undergo maceration. "The first step is to use conventional surgical instruments being very careful that the scalpel and forceps never come in contact with the bone. Any questions?" she finished, her eyes scanning over the audience.

She had a small smile on her face, less because of the appreciative look she saw on the faces of the members of her audience and more because she was relatively satisfied with her grossly oversimplified explanation of her academic topic. It hadn't been an easy task for her, modifying the wording of her topic for the purposes of her audience that she knew was comprised primarily of undergraduates forced to attend her talk because other professors in the Anthropology Department were offering much needed extra credit to students who were in the final week of the summer semester. However, still she'd done it, and she was happy that she'd done it in a way that both conveyed the information, but wasn't inaccurate or misleading.

Such were the thoughts going through her head when, in the span of a single second, Brennan's world turned upside down. She heard his voice before she actually saw him. Of course, she'd known at some point that they'd run into each other again, that their paths would cross once more since that was a part of the deal she'd struck. But, she definitely hadn't expected it to happen that soon, with him coming to her just as he'd promised and so she was completely unprepared when she saw him walk into the room. He walked in, calmly and judiciously even though his eyes had widened the moment he'd drawn upon the door as spotted her there. He was tall, wide-shouldered, and when he walked through the door, he did so shoulder-first, pivoting a bit at his waist so that as soon as his head and shoulders were inside, he was free to scan the entire room, from floor to ceiling and corner to corner. He seemed to take particular attention to soaking in details like this, a quick mental cataloguing of the environment by skimming the whole place with his wide brown eyes in a matter of seconds, before bringing his eyes up to hers again. As soon as their eyes met again, Brennan felt her heart pound as her pulse started to race and her respiration grew shallow. She hoped she wasn't flushing too badly when she saw him make his way down one of the lecture hall's side aisles with his hand slightly raised as she came towards him.

"Yeah, I have a question," he said with a lightly playful tone in his voice, holding his chin confidently high and his head cocked slightly to the side as his eyes focused on the angles of her face and on the way her soft, pink lips moved as she stood there. "It seems to me if you, uhhh, remove the flesh," he said, his mouth hanging open in a lazily slanted, cocky grin as he putzed with something small in his trouser pocket like a coin or a lighter. "Aren't you, uhhh, destroying the evidence?"

She blinked at him when she suddenly realized she'd been staring at him and didn't know how look she'd stood there speechless. Quickly, scrambling to recover, she took several deep breaths and tried to process what she was seeing as she hungrily drank in the sight of him. He looked slightly different than the last time she'd seen him in her apartment. His hair was different, cut a bit shorter at both the back and on the sides than she remembered it. More surprising, it was parted on the side, combed over and styled with what looked like to be too much hair product in what was a rather unimaginative style. His clothing was also different. He was wearing a simple black suit, plain black tie, and crisp pressed white Oxford dress shirt. His skin was also slightly more tanned than she remembered it being. But, as her cool blue eyes locked with his, she realized that some things were the same. His brown eyes still were just as warm and expressive as she remembered, and the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips didn't seem any different.

Taken aback by how much he'd changed and how much he appeared to have stayed the same, Brennan swallowed once as she tried to say in as confident and even a tone of voice as she could muster, "On the contrary. I am revealing evidence―" She was suddenly cut off as the bell rang signaling that the session was over. Reluctantly breaking her gaze with his, she turned her head towards the rest of the audience and said, "Thank you. See you next week."

Brennan, still in shock despite her failed attempts to recover her wits, moved to the podium and attempted to appear to busy herself with gathering her belongings. In reality, she felt so light-headed at seeing him again that it took every bit of self control she had not to run towards him, throw her arms around him, and never let him go. Brennan was quite sure if she did that, she'd end up either arrested (in a best-case scenario) or hospitalized (in a worst-case scenario) and didn't relish either particular outcome. Instead, she tried to remain patient since she knew the only hope they'd have to ever be together again was if _he _came to _her_.

And, after a minute, when the lecture hall was almost emptied, Brennan was only mildly surprised when he did just that.

Walking up to her, he had a strange look on his face, one that Brennan knew meant that he was slightly confused about something and was trying to work through the problem in his head. Nodding at her, he said, "Ahhh, just, uhhhh, one more thing." Brennan felt her heart skip another beat as he came close enough so that she thought she could smell his scent. She wondered if her mind was just playing tricks on her as she inhaled deeply and thought that she might have smelled the faint mingled scents of menthol and sandalwood. Forcing herself to remain calm, she allowed herself the indulgence of staring directly into his eyes as he continued to speak. "I mean, isn't all the good evidence in the flesh?" he asked. "You know, like, the poison and stab wounds and the bullets?"

Brennan couldn't help but smirk as she replied simply, "All of the important indicators are written in the bone if you look carefully."

He quirked an eyebrow at her and gave Brennan a smile that he'd given her countless times before when she knew she'd amused him. Slowly, he cocked his head to one side as he looked at her and said with a lazy grin, "So that's your thing."

This time, Brennan smiled the first genuine smile she'd smiled in some time as she nodded. "Yes," she said confidently. "I am the best in the world."

He again stared at her for another long minute, staring into her blue eyes with a twinkle in his own deep brown eyes as he studied her. After a minute, when she hadn't looked away or said anything more, he merely gave her a slight grin that she'd come to realize long ago could render her completely helpless against his charms. "Oh, okay," he said with a light laugh. "You're serious."

_God, I've missed you_, she said silently since she knew she couldn't say it to him out loud. _I've missed you so much, so very, __very__ much._

Again distracted by the swirl of thoughts and feelings he was eliciting in her, Brennan couldn't help herself as she struggled to find the right words to say to him, and in her distracted state, she could only come up with the rather lame question, "Are you a student here?"

_Tell me your name_, she silently pleaded. _Tell me who you are. Tell me what you do. Tell me that you're happy. That's all I need to know. If you can tell me that you're safe and happy, then it will have all been worth it. Everything that I had to do, everything that I had to sacrifice...all the pain and suffering I've felt? All of it will have been worth it...and then some. Just tell me who you are now. I won't be greedy and hope to ask for more from you. I won't think, despite your promise to me, that you came here for me. Just let me know how I can find you so I can watch over you and make certain that you get to live the life you deserve to live...even...even if it's without me._

He stared at her for a minute and then said with an easy grin, "Special Agent Seeley Booth from the FBI."

_Booth, huh? _a voice echoed in her head. _Is that your name? Seeley Booth? _She furrowed her brows then smirked at the notion that her longtime lover, a Galway-born former vampire (who could still sport a good honeyed brogue after all these years) would've been reborn—as it were—with an English surname. For all the banter he heaved her way about her being an Englishwoman living in England with an Irish surname and sharing her bed with an Irish vampire, she mentally laughed at the irony that her Irish lover had apparently taken on a new life with both a first and last name as exquisitely English as any around. She felt her heart flutter at hearing the sound of his new name. _So, if that's who you are now...then who am I? _She paused for a few seconds, and then fell back on reciting the mantra she'd spent the last thirty days repeating to herself as she tried to get through her depression and all the pain she'd felt at the loss of him.

She was Dr. Temperance Brennan, daughter of Matthew and Christine Brennan, half-sister to Russ, would-be Chicago native and graduate of Northwestern University. She was one of the world's most famous and most skilled forensic anthropologists which was why she'd gained a preeminent position in the Medico-Legal Lab of the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington D.C.

Smiling at him, taking comfort in her mantra, she replied simply, "Dr. Temperance Brennan from the Jeffersonian Institute."

The man she'd once known as an Irish vampire named Angelus, who'd become ensouled and had come to call himself Angel, the individual who'd been her lover and friend, and who was the keeper of a piece of her soul—even if he didn't know he had guardianship of such a charge—stared back at her, interest clearly writ in his dark brown eyes. She felt a flush of warmth as she saw his eyes roam up and down her body in appreciation before he leveled his gaze at her. After a minute, he licked his lips, his tongue darting out the corner of his mouth, and his brown eyes couldn't look away from her blue ones.

The next words out of his mouth were the last ones that Brennan would have expected to hear. She saw a bright glint in his eyes, then a faint smile hang his lips as he narrowed his gaze and asked her quietly, "Do you believe in fate?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, she couldn't help herself as her bright pink lips curved slightly upwards into a smile. "Absolutely not," she told him. "Ludicrous."

His brown eyes twinkled as he considered her response and then shot her another strange look, one that almost seemed to say that somehow he knew she was lying.

Because, in that moment, she _was _lying to him. And, in the grand scheme of things, as Special Agent Seeley Booth, Special Agent of the FBI, stared quizzically at Dr. Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist of the Jeffersonian, she was glad she was lying to him because Brennan knew one thing. If Angelus/Angel/Booth was staring at her like he always had, then there was hope for the future—for _their _future.

She wasn't quite sure what would happen between them, or when, or where, or how. But, if Temperance Brennan was one thing, it was patient. She knew she had time. She would wait. She would wait, and eventually, he would come to her just as he was doing now. And when he did, they would find a way, and at last, maybe—somehow, someway—they'd find a way to be together.

And, until that time, Brennan knew she'd do whatever she had to do to wait, staying close to him, protecting him and watching over him until such a time presented itself so that she would know _their _moment had finally come.

It was only a question of time before their minute would come. Because, come it would, Brennan knew, and when it did, because she was patient, she would be ready and waiting.

* * *

**-The End-**

* * *

**A/N2-** Ah, yes, so there it is.

Some of you might have guessed that was coming. You know, because this is an Angel/Bones crossover series, and the two worlds were starting to merge there. So, did it blow your mind? (Maybe just a little?) Did it break your heart and then glue it back together with an Elmer's Glue of boiled-down reader squees? If anything, we hope we gave you something else to think about next time you see that little scene in Episode 100 when he walks into her lecture hall.

There are other Angel/Bones crossover pieces out there in Fanfic Land that offer up some sort of AngelBooth hybrid, but we're pretty sure no one has ever delivered one like Dharmasera did. So, what do you think? Does anyone else agree?

The series isn't done yet. For those keeping score, we gave you some Angelus stories (three of them, in the last of which you saw a glimpse of Angel) and some Angel stories (three of them, in the last of which you saw a glimpse of Booth). Now, it's time to see how Bren gets on with Booth (or, rather our very AU AngelBooth version of him). Time for some AngelBooth stories. So, coming up next, Washington D.C., 2007. That special every fifth Halloween anniversary thingy is coming up for Brennan and her FBI partner. How will she cope...and more importantly, how will Booth? That sound interesting to anyone? Are you excited about that prospect? We know we're definitely excited about being able to share them with you.

Well, you have to know these pieces are hard to write, melding together two universes into something that makes sense, isn't hideously complicated (any more than anything else Dharmasera writes), and is entertaining to read. Did we pull it off? We wanna know how we did. So, please, let us know what you thought of this piece. We really appreciate the time you folks take to read and review our work. We really, really do. If you can spare a few minutes and let us know what you thought of this piece, and tell us what parts moved you the most or left the biggest impression, we'd be forever in your debt. Take a moment, let us know what you thought. (And, if you want us to know who you are when you review, log in or sign your name to it. The goofy FFnet system is a bit wonky and has a tendency to turn us all into anonymous Guests.)

In any case, thanks for reading and supporting this kooky project of ours. You guys are great.


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